


Part of Your World

by nerddowell



Series: Once Upon a Time... [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, Drowning, Multi, Past Character Death, and so unimaginatively named, elements of violence, god i'm sorry, i'm very sorry honestly, this is basically the little mermaid au that nobody asked for yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 43,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the box, really. I got bit by the fantasy AU bug, and because I watch more Disney than is strictly good for me, this is what my brain came up with. A Little Mermaid AU that nobody asked for, featuring changeling merman!Bucky and Navy sailor!Steve.</p><p>For the purposes of this fic, the Barnes children's ages are reversed - Rebecca is the elder, and Bucky the younger. The age difference is around seven years; at the beginning of the story, Bucky is two, and Rebecca is nine. Also, the narration is a little fourth-wall-ish; I've tried to tell it like a real fairytale, so on occasion the narrator 'speaks' to the audience. I just felt like I should mention that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'ed, like the majority of my writing. Apologies for any mistakes!)
> 
> Also, Winifred Barnes' storytelling dialogue is taken directly from the 1977 Book Club Associates publication of Hans Christian Andersen's _Classic Fairytales_ , with the Erik Haugaard translation/Michael Foreman illustrations, so all credit to Haugaard.

"Far, far from land, where the waters are as blue as the petals of the cornflower and as clear as glass, there, where no anchor can reach the bottom, live the mer-people. So deep is this part of the sea that you would have to pile many church towers on top of each other before one of them emerged above the surface.

"Now you must not think that at the bottom of the sea there is only white sand-"

"Ma, do we _have_ to have this one? How come you never read the bedtime stories _I_ want?" Rebecca Barnes grumbled, flicking her long braids over her shoulders and glowering at her mother from where she was tucked into bed. Her heart-shaped face was scrunched into a frown, blue eyes crackling with frustration. Winifred Barnes sighed; every night, always the same questions. _How come you only read James' favourites? How come you only read him the sea stories? He's a baby, he doesn't even listen anyway_ -

"Because it's your brother's night to choose, and this is his favourite. He always sits nicely through yours, Rebecca. The least you can do is let him enjoy his."

Honestly, Rebecca was probably right. James Barnes - two years old and only just having moved from his baby's crib to a small cot beside his sister's, under the window where he could stand up on the mattress and watch the waves roll in off the shore, hear the gulls shrieking overhead from the open window, and sing back to them in his bubbling toddler's voice. He drove Rebecca mad with his begging for the 'mermay story' every night, even on _her_ nights; but then, she was nine, and hated having to still share a room with Ma and Pa's 'happy accident'.

James adored her. That was the problem. He'd chase her around the house on stubby legs, laughing and thinking her running away and hollering at him was a game, some exciting new play she'd thought up to entertain him, until she'd slam their bedroom door closed behind her and he'd suddenly be left, bewildered, on the other side. He'd take her toys, make them play stupid boys' games with his own - make them 'swim' in puddles until they were grey and grubby with dirty water and mud - and he'd cry when she yelled at him for it, and Ma would never tell _him_ off even though it was _his_ fault her favourite teddy was ruined.

"He's a baby, he doesn't understand," she'd say, soothing his tears as he sobbed into her front, wailing Rebecca's name - or as close to it as he could get, 'BeckBeck' - before reaching for his sister, wanting a placating cuddle from her, too. She'd glare at him and turn on her heel, storming over to the window to watch and wait for their father to return in his great red-hulled boat, the sea lashing at its bow and frothing into trails of foam behind its strong stern.

"-You must not think that at the bottom of the sea there is only white sand. No, here grow the strangest plants and trees; their stems and leaves are so subtle that the slightest current in the water makes them move, as if they were alive..."  
  


* * *

  
(The merpeople were a strange folk, of ethereally pale skin and brilliant cerulean blue eyes, hair of every shade from cream to russet to ebony billowing gently around their sharp, angular faces. Their language, born from the streams of bubbles that would leave their mouths and the careful gesticulations of long, webbed-fingered hands, was untranslatable to the language of you or I; but I will attempt my best. Their names may never be Mermish, as they should; but they will be approximations of such, based on meaning and fluency.)

Halimeda, the Merking's wife, and their son Buchanan had been lost ten years ago whilst swimming together in the Palace Gardens. The boy was a bright, laughing child, with glowing grey-blue eyes like mercury and dark curls that whipped loosely around his chubby cheeks with every flow of the current. The queen and her son had been playing a game of hide and seek, the child swimming between the undulating fronds of kelp, giggling and hiding his gleaming eyes from his mother, when the mesh of a human's fishing net - one of those monstrous huge traps of mesh - swooped through the water, entangling the boy as he investigated it. The child had been ensnared within seconds; lost with the thousands of crushing, screaming fish inside.

The young Prince had cried for his mother as he struggled to break through the net, and the Queen responded, doing everything she could to try and save her child; but the weight and panic of the trapped fish proved too much for the little boy, and he was crushed to death within the net. The Queen, by now so entangled that she was as trapped as everyone else, was hauled to the surface with the flapping, desperate tuna and the body of her little boy, and was suffocated - for merfolk cannot breathe our air - and thrown back into the water like trash.

The King had mourned his wife for many years, locking himself away within his coralled castle where the dim greenish light of the human world couldn't reach. He was a handsome man, with a fierce dark beard like a bristlebush that hid an even stronger jaw, and his eyes were the same colour as every other merman's - the blue of a fathoms-deep lake - and there were many aristocratic merwomen who wished to soothe his woes and perhaps mend his heart in marriage, but he would have none of it. No one would replace his wife, nor his son. No one anywhere in his kingdom of our seven seas and several more than only he and his folk knew of.

He would sit for hours on the bench he fashioned for her with his own hands from amber and coral, that gleamed every shade of the sunset beneath the waves, looking at his wife's garden, lost in thought. Halimeda had been a strange sort of merwoman, to those who knew her well: always too curious, always caught by the next glimmering thing leagues above them, some trinket dropped by humans or discarded from their ships. Always swimming too close to them, though her face never broke the surface; always watching them from beneath the waves, too shy to approach but too curious to live without knowing more, always wanting to know more - a very strange merwoman.

Her fascination with humans had been passed on to her son; had cost her her life, and their little boy's. That day, the King had issued a royal decree: that no merfolk would be permitted to swim to the surface, lest humans be alerted to their presence and another tragedy such as that which befell Halimeda and Buchanan occurred. The merfolk, out of respect to their newly bereaved King and to his deceased wife and son, agreed, and each vowed to keep the law strictly. And so, we humans had no idea of who and what were swimming around fathoms below us at the bottom of the sea for so many years.


	2. Water Nixie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rebecca witnesses an accident, and James undergoes a change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, unbeta'ed. Apologies for any mistakes!

_Come away, little lass_  
 _Come away to the water_  
 _To the ones that are waiting only for you_  
\- Glen Hansard

"Rebecca!"

Their mother's strident voice called to her daughter in reproachful tones as she sheepishly pulled her younger brother away from the railings lining the hull of their boat. James had been playing with his wooden soldiers, making them walk the plank into the placid waves making their fishing boat bob gently; as usual, their mother was being overprotective and making sure her darling baby boy - her favourite child - didn't fall into the water. Personally, Rebecca thought that if James was dumb enough to reach under the railings to try and get his soldiers back from the water, then he deserved to fall in, but she wasn't allowed to say that in front of their mother.

The wind was coming in from the east at 18 knots according to their father as George negotiated the bow of the boat skilfully between two docked schooners, gliding neatly up to the jetty as Rebecca, nine years old and agile as a cat, sprang off the deck and onto the slippery wooden planks, running alongside the boat until she found a mooring point and quickly wrapped the thick mooring lines around it, securing the line with the round turn and two half-hitches her father had showed her how to tie the day before. Once the boat was fairly secure, George also disembarked to help tighten and adjust the moorings before beginning to unload the fish: crabs in crates, shifting over one another like a fish's oscillating scales, lobsters still in their pots, huge nets full of tuna, cod, sardines, all the fruits of the ocean.

Rebecca grumbled as James  was allowed to help their mother and father carry the stacks of crates to their fishmonger, Fairbairn, in his seafront shop - albeit only in handfuls, kept in his small red bucket he always liked to make sandcastles with. Oysters sat in barrels of ice by the door, a small sign stuck nailed to the barrel labelling their price, the best offer on the seafront. Rebecca helped herself to one as she passed, quick, practised fingers easing it out of its shell and cutting off the beard with the fishknife she kept in her pocket - damn her mother and her constant lectures on what was and wasn't 'ladylike' - slurping it into her mouth and chewing quickly, before their mother could notice. Shuddering at the taste of sour brine.

"I hate you," Rebecca snapped at James acidly, aiming a kick in her younger brother's direction. James pulled himself up to stand on Rebecca's foot and waddled, in that penguinish toddler way, over to the starboard side of the boat, away from the dock. He lay down to watch the eels, slippery and feather-light in the water, coil around the loose lines and flit in and out of the mooring loops. The waves, green and frothy with the scum of the sewers leaking into them, sloshed against the side of the boat, occasionally splashing in his face, making him taste salt on his lips. He squealed delightedly and kicked his feet, drumming his palms against the deck to gain his sister's attention.

Rebecca ignored him, offering only a disinterested "Come away from there, James." and a lazy flap of her hand in her younger sibling's direction; James obediently moved away, picking up a well-chewed dog ball Rebecca had found floating in the water during a fishing trip and tried putting it in his own mouth, trying to bite the hard rubber. Rebecca yanked it out of his hand with a disgusted snort.  
"Urgh, James, no! Dirty!"

"Dirty," James repeated, shaking his head, and picked up one of his toy soldiers instead, chewing his head, drool dribbling down the soldier's body and over his small knuckles. Rebecca rolled her eyes - the kid was impossible - and went back to fiddling with her bootlaces.

James lay back down on his stomach, trying to reach down to feel the cool water on his fingers. Something glittered just below his hand, darting around like a will-o'-the-wisp, and he made a loud excited noise, clenching his hand to try and grasp it. The thing streaked away, dancing around his fingers, and moved an inch farther from the edge of the boat, enticing him to try again. James leaned further over, trying to reach it, but it kept slipping through his fingers. Growing frustrated, he wriggled forward on his tummy to put both arms over the edge, making a swipe for the glittering fish flickering teasingly an inch from his fingertips; with a squeak of shock and a loud splash, the little boy was in the water and already sinking towards the sandy bottom.  
  


* * *

  
The boy was beautiful. Peach-skinned, with beautiful soft brown curls flicking out from behind his small ears and hanging into his eyes, the same colour as the dead Queen's - bright silvery grey-blue, like quicksilver. Looking at the child, he felt his heart constrict in his chest; the child was beautiful (he wouldn't have taken him otherwise), but his resemblance to the young Prince was as though Potiphar was bringing Halimeda's boy back from the dead.

Potiphar kept a tight hold on the child's hand as he slipped through the water, bubbles streaming from the little boy's mouth; he had to make it to Scylla before the boy drowned. The Water Witch - as she was called, not often to her face although with all the (healthy and fearful) respect in the world - would be able to give the child fins and a tail. After a visit to her 'apothecary', the boy would look like any other infant merchild.

It was a long swim from the surface to the deep gloom of the Witch's workshop; far past the boundaries of the King's glittering kingdom, buried in the crevasse between two huge outcrops of rock, where there was no chance of the Up People's glittering golden sun tainting her waters. The Water Witch worked in darkness always. It was never safe for merfolk in her waters, either, but Potiphar had convinced himself that this was a special case.  The king's son, brought home, alive and breathing. Or he would be, hopefully, if he managed to get to the Witch in time.

The dank, flickering light of a lanternfish glowed in the thick, misty darkness beside the entrance to the cave; Scylla kept it pinned with a pair of long stalactites which had broken off from the roof of her cave, keeping the fish still with one thrust through the gut and the other through the centre of the hapless creature's fanned tail.

Scylla slithered out of her cave to greet him, beaming, the tentacles beneath her skirt lashing agitatedly.  
"Well, well, well. If it isn't everyone's favourite little water nixie."

Potiphar rolled his eyes. "I'm not here for a chat, Scylla. This is royal business - the child. Make him mer."

Scylla's age-yellowed eyes swung to the boy still tightly held in Potiphar's iron grasp, little head lolling, a large bubble on the tip of bursting brushing his bottom lip. The witch smiled, showing crooked teeth the colour of iron filings, and took the child's hand, her long fingernails scraping over the smooth, plump skin. The boy's skin paled, a silvery ripple spreading over the fingers and down his arm; scales appeared on his bare legs, the same glowing, luminescent blue as his eyes, and his feet webbed as his legs fused into a tail, flexing and splashing in the water, bubbles streaming from his mouth. His eyes opened wide and he smiled at the sprite, pointing and making squealing, grunting noises.

Potiphar grabbed his hand again. King Pelegios would be extremely happy with this one - that is, if he didn't kill Potiphar for going to the surface.  
  


* * *

  
Rebecca heard the splash and brushed it off as James throwing things into the water again for his own amusement - the baby loved to hear the splashes, feel the saltwater sting against his ruddy cheeks - so carried on braiding her hair into a fishtail, laid back on the deck of the boat to cloudwatch. The sun was beginning to set in the sky, and the vista above her was changing from dusky bluish-purple to pink, to peach, to orange, to fiery red, the colour of fire engines - James' favourite colour. She turned to show her younger brother and felt her heart seize in her chest when she could no longer see him wriggling on his belly, trying to reach his soldiers where he'd dropped them into the water.

How much time had passed since that splash? Where was he?

"James?" she called quietly, trying not to let the rising panic in her voice alert her parents to something being wrong. He was probably only playing hide-and-seek; he loved games where he could explore, where he could cram himself into the smallest places he'd fit into and wait, giggling, for his sister or mother, red-faced with panic, to find him. "James, it's not hide-and-seek time now. Come out."

She paced the length of the deck, from behind her father's cabin at the forecastle to the very prow; there was no sign of her little brother anywhere, no telltale trail of squeaky childish giggles to follow. Ripples were still spreading out in soft, menacing rings by the side of the boat where she'd last seen him. She felt tears burn behind her eyes - _taken my eye off him for a moment, and what does he do, he goes and_ falls in - and yelled for her father, panic overtaking the need to save her skin when her younger brother could be drowning or dead at the bottom of the harbour by now. The sea wasn't deep here - she could have easily swum back up to shore herself - but James was only a baby. He wouldn't have been able to do more than splash helplessly as he sank.

It was her fault. She was supposed to have been watching him.

"Rebecca! What's wrong? Where's James?"

She pointed with one trembling hand to the water, and her father's face paled. He cursed - she'd never heard him swear before, never in her life - and pulled his boots off, rolling up his sleeves before diving off the side of the boat and straight down into the water, body cutting through the water like a knife. Her father would find him. He would. None of them would let James drown.

But what if he did?


	3. Sun Roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George lost James to the waves. Four years have passed since then; Rebecca comes up with a way to help the family grieve, and James receives a new name and a pair of presents.
> 
> Also, Cappy Bear. That's all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, unbeta'd. Sorry for any mistakes!

_When the sea was calm, the sun appeared like a crimson flower, from which all light flowed._  
\- Hans Christian Andersen

James was gone.

George had searched and searched, eyes open in the stinging, murky salt water, fighting to find whatever piece of his little boy he possibly could - but there was nothing. Not a trace, other than the small red bucket bobbing in the gentle waves that lapped against the hull of the boat. He cradled the bucket in his hands as his wife wrapped a thick blanket around his soaked shoulders, staring into the harbour, hoping against hope that James' curly head would break the surface and laugh in that bright, bubbling way he had, as though sunlight were spilling from his mouth. Night was falling; it was getting dark, the sea even darker. James wouldn't like it down there; he hated the dark, would cry for hours unless he or Winifred left his small bedside lamp in the children's room on when they put them both to bed.

Rebecca asked for _The Little Mermaid_ that night. Winifred told her to lay down and go to sleep, else she'd get her father in there and George would tell her what's what.

Morning rolled around at a snail's pace, every sleepless minute stretching out a thousand years between the stars flickering in from behind the clouds and then, finally, as the sky started to wash a dusty rose pink, fading away again. Winifred sat all night by the porthole, tears rolling down her cheeks, staring at the waves and wishing for a sign. Even to see his tiny body float up to the surface, or to see a small hand or foot caught in lobster pots and fish netting as the early morning fishermen - George's companions - began to pull in their night's catch. There was nothing.

Rebecca had finally fallen asleep as the sun began to rise. Like her mother, she had watched out of the portholes of the boat for her brother. Winifred had never hated her children before - not truly - but for a split second, she hated her daughter. Hated her for the ease with which she could rest with her younger brother missing - hated her for being able to sink into sleep's gentle arms, to allow herself to relax enough to fall. Looking at James' untidy bed, his sister curled uncomfortably within its tiny frame, blankets haphazardly thrown over herself and face buried in James' pillow, Winifred wanted to drag her out of it - throw her onto the floor, yank the blankets and sheets off the bed, and press them to her face, inhale her son's babyish scent for the last time, all talcum and the soapy scent of his favourite fingerpaints. He'd even left his teddy bear - a tiny yellow-furred bear in a red, white and blue striped jacket with starred lapels, who he called 'Cappy Bear' - behind, and Cappy was clutched in Rebecca's right fist. Crooked ears crushed flat against his stuffed head.

Winifred shook her awake - gently - and called her for breakfast, walking to the kitchen on autopilot as George climbed out of bed to pull in the lines. The boat and his business, after all, were still afloat; even if the family felt like they were sinking.  
  


* * *

  
George bought his wife a bunch of roses one evening, trying to cheer her up. In hindsight, it might have seemed insensitive - as though he were celebrating the loss of their child, and red like a splash of blood over his fist as he crushed the stems with nervous hands - but he was at a loss. Winifred had been crying all day, and all he'd wanted was to make her smile. The whole boat was caught under a blanket of grief, months - years, had it been? - after James' loss. The tides came in and out, tireless, and there was still no sign, no clue of James having survived, nor even having died. It was just... empty. As though a fissure had opened in the earth that day and James had fallen in to be swallowed up before it had sealed itself again. Gone. As clean-cut as that.

Winifred had torn them to shreds.

George had been relegated to the deck, to sleep on the hammock Rebecca liked to lie in on sunny days to rock in the breeze and sun herself. He was lying there that night, trying to sleep, when he saw his daughter's willow-thin form step up to the railing, nightie flapping in the breeze rolling off the waves. Her hands were coated in red, like she'd dipped them in paint; she threw fluttering petals into the wind, watched them careen and whirl through the air like tiny kites before falling to the buffeting waves beneath. Handful after handful, tossed to the wind.

"Rebecca!" he called, climbing carefully out of his bed for the evening and crossing the deck over to her. She looked up at him with tear-streaked cheeks, blue eyes wide and shining with wetness. George wrapped his arms around her tiny waist in a hug, and she flung her arms around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder.

"It was my fault, daddy," she cried, fisting her hands in his nightshirt. Thirteen, far too old to be calling him 'Daddy' still, but guilt spoke in strange ways. He knew the feeling. He rubbed her back, his own tears threatening to fall and dampen the top of her hair. "Daddy, it was all my fault - I - I wasn't watching him-"

"We shouldn't've left him with you," George whispered brokenly, staring out to sea as the rose petals flashed in the setting sunlight like a slick of blood skimming the water's surface. Marking James' final resting place. "We should never have left the two of you like that - I should have stayed back, your mother should have stayed back-"

"I'm sorry," Rebecca sobbed. "I wanted to get him, I did, but he just - he was just-"

"Gone," George said, voice cracking. He blinked back tears fiercely, rubbing his eyes. _You were nine, Rebecca. You were nine, and he - he wasn't even two; a nine year old girl, in charge of a baby. We deserved something to go wrong, just for having done it in the first place._ _Nine years old_. _Four years since he disappeared._ _How had that happened? Where had that time gone?_ He could barely remember any of it, but James' disappearance - his lungs screaming for air as he splashed up onto a rock and gulped in a breath, staring around the harbour in a panic - that, he remembered like it was yesterday. Like it was minutes ago.

Rebecca nodded into his chest.

"Yes. Just gone."

They stood like that for what felt like hours, sharing their grief together - Rebecca's hands creasing his nightshirt and staining it red with the roses' pigments - until Winifred came out of the main cabin, looking altogether too much like their daughter. Face haggard, hair loose around her face, nightgown flapping around her usually curvaceous frame. She seemed to have shrunk; become tiny, wizened, a dried-out husk instead of a living woman. She approached them silently before taking both of them in her arms and allowing herself to sink into the embrance, until her cheeks felt stiff with the salt spraying off the waves. Grief had wrung her out like a dishrag; there was no energy anywhere in her body anymore, just the hard stringy existence without the pleasure, the pain, the humanity of it.

She had no more tears to cry.

"We're throwing the flowers into the sea," Rebecca told her, showing her the handfuls of crushed rose petals. "People do it with ashes when someone dies... And James' favourite colour was red, like these. Maybe he'd like it." She swallowed around the thick lump in her throat, eyes glimmering again. "I wish we could ask him."

Winifred took the petals from her daughter's hand and gently tipped them out over the railings, watching them float serenely down. Feeling as though she was maybe, finally, beginning to let go a little bit of the panic, the _fear_ that still gripped her every moment. This sea had swallowed her son. Why _James_? He was only a little boy. Why not George - he could swim - or herself? Rebecca could have lived with only one parent. She could have lived without her husband, if she had her children. But a brother - a son - a little boy - could never be replaced.

Winifred threw the petals into the sea, and fought the urge to follow them.  
  


* * *

  
The boy grew in the passing years, grew into a strong, handsome child with a snub nose and those same luminescent grey eyes like lanterns in the gloomy greenish light of the merkingdom. He had forgotten the childhood he had lived Up Above, an underwater Peter Pan; always chasing the catfish around the castle corridors, trying to catch them in clever, long-fingered hands and laughing when they managed to dart away, slippery as they whipped out of his clutches. He was a golden child, the apple of the King's eye, and would frequently entertain his father with tales of his escapades around the castle and in the spreading gardens surrounding it. The King loved to hear his tales of what he'd found whilst exploring, but always impressed on him the importance of never, ever straying to the surface. "Humans are too dangerous, my boy," he would say, and the child - Buchanan, after the King's lost boy - would smile and nod.

"Yes, father. I won't stray. I promise."

The King kissed his forehead and wished him goodnight before leaving the boy to his rest and returning to his chambers and his new wife. Scylla was a rarity in the merworld, a woman with golden eyes like the humans' sun and a tail to match, with scales that gleamed like a thousand stars. She was as beautiful as she was clever, always a witty reply to anything he said, always a teasing laugh or a fond expression, and by the time they had been married three years she had borne him two children, a pair of equally golden twin girls, with their mother's clever tongue and their brother's insatiable thirst for mischief.

Buchanan would often be found in their rooms, playing hide-and-seek or chase, swimming around their nursery pretending that he had lost them whilst they giggled themselves into fits from beneath their clam-shell cribs or from inside their coralled wardrobes. He would find them and pull them out from their hiding places, laughing. Run his fingers through their hair, kiss their brows, and tell them to count before swimming away to 'hide' himself behind something obviously far too small (above which he would waggle his eyebrows and pull faces until his sisters were too busy shrieking with laughter to remember their hide-and-seek game).

But his favourite place to be was the Prince's Garden, nestled in a secluded corner of the Royal Gardens towards the rear of the castle. The Prince's Garden had been planted by the King's first wife for their son, the Prince Buchanan, whom he naturally thought to be himself; and such, he found it a grievous insult for anyone to be in 'his garden' when he wished to be alone there. The gardeners who tended it were always respectful and left him to his thoughts, and so he could while away hours laying on his back in the flowerbed and feeling the petals tickling his face, his arms, his tail. His favourites were the sunset roses; flowers of every shade of red they could find, until he was floating not only in the sea but in a field of scarlet, crimson, vermilion, magenta and rose. These, he referred to as his sun patch; it felt, after all, as though he were looking at many tiny suns burning brightly under the waves, especially for him.

Red had always been his favourite colour. One of his earliest memories - one that always came to his mind as he was falling asleep, gazing out of the amber-and-blue sea glass windows in his bedroom - was of looking up at Up Above, at the red light falling over the wave-glass ceiling, and seeing shapes just like the petals of his sun flowers floating on the surface.


	4. Boys of flesh, boys of marble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Queen is not everything she appears to be; the Prince discovers a new love (of a sort). The plot is actually advanced for once!
> 
> (Trigger mentions for blood and blades. Not in any great detail, no violence, but they're mentioned and I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed, as ever. (I should really get on that.)
> 
> The cauldron scene (you'll know it when you get to it) is again lifted heavily from the Haugaard/Foreman translation of The Little Mermaid from their collection of his tales, published by Book Club Associates 1977, so credit to them!
> 
> Also, wow, this is updating fast at the moment, but unfortunately it's likely to slow down from next Monday as I'll be starting a new job where I'll be working on a building site for nine or ten hours a day and therefore will likely be absolutely shattered! Anyway, thank you to everyone who's been reading, kudos-ing and commenting so far, and I hope you continue to enjoy it!

_Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years._  
\- G. K. Chesterton

The two princesses grew to be beautiful young women, but they were vain. Like many young girls spoilt by overindulgent mothers, they grew jealous of those they perceived to have more than they, and were unkind and spiteful. The elder - four minutes her sister's senior - was Ula. She had shining golden hair that waved loosely down her back, braided through with flowers picked from the gardens and fastened away from her face with a band of pearls. The younger, Una, was much the same as her sister, only with hair that had darkened to the sheen of ebony, kept in two neat whorls, one either side of her face by hairpins made from sea glass and amber. The Queen loved her daughters deeply, and wished for them to one day be queens; however, the King's favour always laid with his son, who was given preference over Ula and Una.

Ula came to her mother one day, sister in tow, and pleaded with her to help them. Buchanan had grown into a strong young man of fifteen, with a mischievous smile that always charmed the young mermaids of the palace, and pale grey-blue eyes that shone like deep-sea pearls. The King was to proclaim Buchanan heir in a grand royal ceremony the next morning; Ula and Una wanted their mother to persuade him to name them Queens-in-waiting instead. Scylla loved her daughters and, like them, was jealous of the affection and esteem the King had for his son, and so agreed to do so.

Una clapped her hands in pleasure, beaming at her mother - and Ula smiled, throwing her arms around the Queen.  
"Thank you, mother!"

Scylla smiled at them, stroking her daughters' hair with long fingers.

"You're welcome, darlings."  
  


* * *

  
"I cannot," the King insisted, the moment Scylla brought the girls' request before him. Buchanan was absent - it was not yet his right, nor his requirement to sit in the throne room for matters of court. Instead, he was out in the Prince's Garden, no doubt getting up to mischief and teasing the gardeners with his jokes. The Queen's face hardened, and she glowered at her husband, unused to not getting her way. There had never been anything she had asked him for that he had not given her; he was so in love with her, that he could not. But Buchanan was, he said, 'off-limits'; when it came to the boy's birthright as Prince - his birthright of becoming King of the merfolk - the King was powerless. His love for his son outweighed his love for his wife and daughters.

"Don't you love your daughters?" the Queen snapped, her hair writhing around her angular face like water snakes, golden ropes seeming to spit sparks and eyes flashing like chunks of amber. The King sighed, throwing his hands up in the air helplessly.

"Of course I do! I love all of my children!"

"Don't you love _me_?"

"Of course!" The King cried, taking his wife's hands in his and kissing her knuckles; his beard brushed over the pearl-encrusted ring he had given her on the day they were married in the palace chapel, with Buchanan (guided by his manservant) as bearer. He thought back to that day, his wife resplendent in her floating pink dress, sewn from silks and velvets sunk to their kingdom from the wreckages of merchant ships. He had never seen a woman more beautiful, not even his first wife on their wedding day. Halimeda had been striking, a waiflike elegance to her in her almost ghostlike, funereal white dress; Scylla had looked as though she were glowing with life, golden hair bright and skin rosy and pink against the red velvet of the dress.

"And yet you won't do this for me? For us? Your wife, your trueborn children. They are your princesses, your flesh and blood. The boy is yours in name, but not in bloodline. Why do you overlook his sisters - your true daughters - in his favour? They are the royals, not he!"

The King understood what she wanted from him, but he couldn't do it. Buchanan looked so much like his first boy - so much like the trueborn Prince, so much like his first Queen - that sometimes he forgot that he was not the little boy from the net that had taken his mother's life, miraculously freed. Buchanan had been the apple of his eye as the boy grew up; the joy of the grieving king's days. There was never a day that his son's cheeky smile or mischievous, twinkling eyes didn't brighten some cold corner of the King's heart still recovering from the loss of Halimeda and _their_ son. He realised that he had been showing an unfair preference for his son over Ula and Una; but Buchanan was the eldest, and merlaw dictated, much as ours does, that the throne of the kingdom must pass to the eldest available heir.

"The law forbids me, my love. Of course I love you, and my daughters - the three of you are the graces of my days, the lights in my eyes and heart. But I cannot do this for you."

"You must!" the Queen said, eyes sparkling with tears. "You must do this for me, otherwise how am I to believe, truly, that you love us as you say? I cannot. You have to name Ula your heir, and Una after her."

The King felt his wife's tears pull at the strings of his heart. He couldn't deny her anything, after all, especially when her luminous eyes filled with tears like that. He bowed his head heavily in acquiescence.

"I will - think about it. I will do all I can," he promised. The Queen smiled softly, pleasantly, all traces of tears forgotten, and kissed his forehead.

"Thank you, my love."  
  


* * *

  
Buchanan was laid on his back in the Prince's Garden, staring up at the waves far, far above his head, a soft smile on his face. He loved to be in this garden, where he could feel at once both isolated and close to every other merfolk in the kingdom. The Prince's Garden was full now not just of his crimson flowers, but of artefacts from sunken ships: bottles made from glass as thin and clear as crystal, that gleamed green and blue like twinkling stars from the sand; scraps of fabric - red, gold, green, blue, rose, violet, white, deepest black - that fluttered in the gentle current from where they were wound loosely around the branches and trunks of the trees. His favourite was the huge pink tree in the very corner, shaded and soft with long, drooping branches like a weeping willow, below which he had installed the statue.

The statue was a marble boy - a young man - carved from stone that was almost transparently clear, and had sunk to the bottom of the sea when the ship carrying it was lost. His face was beautiful, but sad: a downward turn to his heavy-lidded eyes that spoke of endless depths of emotion trapped in his gaze. The boy had long, curling hair that brushed the nape of his neck, standing nude in a loose, natural posture with one hand gripping a small cylinder  and the other slightly outstretched. Buchanan often sat beneath the statue, gazing up at his kind, sad eyes and wondering what had happened to the boy to give him that expression on his face. Perhaps, like the prince, he had lost a parent; or perhaps a lover. Buchanan knew that many folk had loves, sweethearts, by his age - he himself was the exception. He found himself more entranced by the statue, with his faraway gaze and soft, perfect Cupid's-bow lips than by any of the mermaids who giggled shyly behind their hands when he passed.

The most fascinating thing for him, though, was below the boy's waist. Where Buchanan smoothed seamlessly into his tail, the boy had a small, strange protuberance  and two tails, strong and muscled and ending in strange lumps of marble flesh with short but elegant fingers. He knew that this must be how humans looked, as though they had an odd sort of elongated hands at the end of these long jointed tails, but the way the statue leant on them showed they were not for holding; more for the support of the body. He wished he knew what they were called.

He was staring at the statue now, studying every inch of it. The sweet face, the curling hair, the soft gaze. He righted himself and swam up next to it, trying to adopt the same posture, trying to imagine himself with those strange, strong tails. His own tail, of course, made the position difficult - the way the boy was stood was impossible to replicate without the split below his abdomen. He placed his hand in the statue's and pressed himself against his marble chest; feeling the cool stone against his body and noting the way his hand fit perfectly in the statue's grasp. A strange urge came over him to kiss the statue's lips; he shook his head, calling himself an idiot, but nevertheless glanced quickly around himself before pressing the absolute briefest of kisses against the carved mouth. There was no sudden breath, nor movement from the stone boy. He hadn't expected any.  
  


* * *

  
The Queen swam between the two jutting overcrops of rock to her old home; the cavern of the Water Witch, where her many jars and bottles of magics were kept in a huge clam-shell cabinet. An enormous barnacle-encrusted cauldron sat in the centre of the room, protected by the bones of a shark's jaw, serrated teeth and all. Any thieves possessed of the idea to steal from her, from inside of the cauldron, would find the jaws snapping closed over their wrists and would be unable to get free. Magic was a dangerous profession; those who meddled would end up hurt. The Queen knew that better than most.

She bathed herself in the cauldron, washing away the glamour of a merwoman and stretching her cramped tentacles slowly with a groan of pain, rubbing the feeling back into them with thin, sharp-fingered hands. The Witch was never made to have been Queen, but needs dictated her to stay close to the boy in the case of her plan going awry. The boy was the key, of course; the moment Potiphar had brought him to her, she had known that he would be the instrument she needed.

Her daughters would be Queens, as she was. She would make sure of it.

Lighting the fire beneath the cauldron and watching it flicker blue like burning sulphur, she threw bottle after bottle into the gigantic pot, hearing the glass break and scream against its metal walls. She cut her chest with a glass knife, letting the blood drop into the cauldron and watching it burn, staining the contents as green as St. Elmo's fire. The steam that rose from the pot became strange figures, terrifying in their shapelessness, the mists warping and knotting into strangling fingers reaching for her knotted throat. She laughed at them and promised that they would have their prey; not her blood, but that of a King and a Prince.

The brew reached a rolling boil, sounding like the screaming of an animal in agony. At last, the potion was finished, as clear and pure as water. She dipped a bottle below the surface, filling it to the brim and stoppering it with the eye of a polyp.  
  


* * *

  
That night, when she came to the King's bed to make love, she bit him at the climax of her passion; bit until her teeth broke his skin and a bead of blood, purple in the dying blue light of their bedroom, and caught it in the bottle. The potion stayed clear, but let out a snake's hiss; she covered the noise with a cry, and he rolled her over in their bed to take his own pleasure.

When the King was finally asleep, she headed to the Prince's bedroom, armed with her glass knife and the bottle. The boy was asleep on the window seat, curled up against the panes of amber with his head resting on his arm and a soft stream of snore-bubbles streaming from his parted lips. She reached out to curl a lock of his hair around her fingers, cut it free from his scalp with the knife; caught the edge of the blade on the slightly pointed tip of his ear, enough to make him bleed. The boy stirred in his sleep with a soft groan, but didn't awaken.

The Queen unstoppered the bottle, and tapped the blood into the bottle. The potion turned charcoal black, hissing and steaming. She smiled at the bottle and began to speak, her lips curling and snarling around the words, not in any form of Mermish. This was the ancient language of magic; of blood sacrifices, _curses_.

"He whose lips this drink, will be cursed twofold. First, he may never break the surface of the sea with his head; second, if he should, he will become that which he was, and he will drown."

She tipped the bottle and soaked the prince's lips with the black liquid. The boy's mouth opened lightly, his eyes fluttered in his sleep, and he settled back with a thick gulp and a sweep of his tongue over his lips.

The Witch-Queen smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visual for the statue is the Antinous Farnese:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I'm a Classicist at heart. Hopefully you'll forgive me for even working that into a completely unrelated fic project. But the statue is just _so pretty_ , right? Right.
> 
> Also, the princesses' names are Celtic names, relating to the sea. _Ula_ means _sea jewel_ , and _Una_ means _white wave_ , according to [this](http://hasani.net.phtemp.com/water.html) website. Just thought I'd throw that in!


	5. Driftwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THE APPEARANCE OF STEVE! It's all kicking off, people.
> 
> Also, Bucky has a massive crush, pass it on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Unbeta'ed. Which will likely make itself incredibly obvious with every and any Steve parts, as I have literally zero knowledge about the US Navy beyond ranking and insignia information I have dredged up from Wikipedia. (I do, however, have experience with the British Navy - so a lot of the vocabulary terms I've used are what Brit sailors call bits of the ship, and hopefully will translate accurately across.) Any glaring inaccuracies, let me know - and accept my apologies in advance!
> 
> If you've stuck with this so far, thank you so much. You have the patience of a saint.

_"If men are not so unlucky as to drown," asked the little mermaid, "then do they live forever?"_  
\- Hans Christian Andersen

"ROGERS!" Captain Phillips' voice came booming from the pilothouse like a harbinger of doom and a dull week of sweeping and scrubbing the galley. Steve bit back the instinctive sigh - hearing his name yelled like that was never a sign of good news to come - and snapped to attention, eyes raised to where the Captain was standing, red-faced, with his hands braced on the desk. "GET IN HERE!"

Steve answered with the customary "Aye aye, sir," and tried not to slouch on his way across the slippery deck towards the pilothouse. A coil of rope around one of the mooring bollards threatened to trip him as he got lost in thoughts of being made to clean down the galley - his usual job when the Captain felt he was in need of character-building torture - or worse, the heads. He knocked smartly and waited for the invitation to enter before stepping over the threshold. The Captain was accompanied by Dr. Erskine, a land GP serving as auxiliary medical personnel on board, and the on-board chaplain.

"Rogers, Dr. Erskine here was telling me that the sick bay is lacking in assistants and orderlies. Given your track record coming down with  just about everythin' under the sun on your medical, I suggested that you might be willing to help out. More likely to be able to shake whatever bugs get thrown at you." The Captain levelled Steve with a gaze like iron, waiting to see whether he'd acquiesce or insist on carrying out his duties as a seaman recruit.

Dr. Erskine was kinder, laying a gentle hand on Steve's scrawny shoulder. The on-board medical bay had been running short of personnel since the ship had docked three weeks earlier at Key West; unstruck seaman recruits like Steve were the medical bay's best bet at getting personnel levels back up, as they were not yet accepted to be rated as firemen, airmen or Seabees. Steve swallowed heavily and reluctantly nodded, silently waving goodbye to the dream he'd held since childhood of being a EM2 like his father. Being a hospitalman under Dr. Erskine wouldn't be too bad, after all, and it got him onto a fast track towards finally being struck - something Captain Phillips had been putting off whilst he tried to work out exactly what Steve was good for.

"You'll do it, Rogers?"

"Aye aye, sir." Steve kept his eyes on the Captain's face, waiting for him to decide that he'd made the wrong call, that scrawny, weak little Rogers wasn't someone they needed in the sick bay - but what other use  could he have? He wasn't strong, like Seabees Hodge or Dugan, nor quick-witted like Falsworth. There was no use for him save for his hands, his gentle voice and his delicate handling. He was better at stitches than shooting. Dr. Erskine would at least be able to keep him busy, instead of fixing him with that pitying look the Captain always gave him, or the mocking stares of the other recruits. He squared his shoulders.

"I'll report to med bay in the morning."

"No, no," Dr. Erskine said, smiling at him, "you'll come now. Follow me."

"Go on, Rogers," the Captain nodded, already turning his attention back to the desk, watching the controls and radars over the communications technician's shoulder, "go."

"Aye aye, sir. Thank you, sir." _Go_ , he said. Steve went.

-

The sick bay was empty, but for himself, Dr. Erskine and a couple of female orderlies in Navy uniforms. They were plump women, the uniforms pinching a little in unfortunate places which made them look like sausages stuffed into too-tight skins; but they were kind, and friendly, and made him feel useful when they immediately set to giving him tasks to complete, like turning down the beds, checking the med cabinets were stocked and properly organised, and refilling supplies. The doctor took him through his duties quickly and with patience, something he had never been afforded in basic training whenever he came whole seconds behind the other recruits in PT or on marches.

"You'll be in the med bay cabins in the aft crew berth," one of the girls - Margie - told him, rinsing a tray of silver tools under the tap before setting them carefully on the side. "There's just the one cabin, though, and you'll be in it alone 'til we can find you a bunkmate or two. Hope you don't mind the solitude."

"Solitude suits me just fine, ma'am," Steve replied, blushing when he remembered he'd forgotten her rank - superior to his, of course - and stammering in his rush to tack it on at the end. Margie laughed at how flustered he'd gotten, and teased him about knowing nothing about how to speak to a woman, even when his words were scripted with the prefix of 'Aye aye' and ended with her rank. Steve only turned a deeper shade of scarlet and looked at Dr Erskine - who was smiling to himself in amusement as he sterilised more tools for Steve to put away - and wished for the floor to swallow him whole.

-

Buchanan loved the sea during a storm. The flashes of lightning and rumbling of thunder were amplified beneath the water, making the sea burn green for a split second before the waves imitated the hollow booming, the whole sea coming alive and breathing around him. He felt like one of the scraps of material tied to his trees - tossed and thrown by the currents going wild, hurled this way and that, enjoying the challenge of swimming counter to whichever way they wanted to throw him next. Storms were his favourite weather; storms meant more presents for his garden, statues, bottles, pins with tiny stars and even those land fish which sat in the trees or swooped, shrieking, out of the sky. Storms were the only times he could safely break the rules and swim just that tiny bit too close to the surface - never close enough to be more than a pale smudge below the waves to any of us who might be looking, but so close that it set his heart to pounding with fear and exhilaration, and made him jittery with excitement for hours after the sea had finally calmed again.

The storm now was raging, the sea screaming and pounding its fists against the sky far above; flashes of lightning illuminated shapes he had never seen before and glinted off the bottles and the marble of his statue. A thin, milky stream of moonlight created a spotlight over the statue's face for scant seconds before something huge - a sea monster, perhaps, huge and black - passed over its head, high enough to be sitting on the sky. Buchanan was alive with curiosity; ignoring everything his father had told him - everything the laws had written down years before - he began to swim, higher and higher and higher until he could reach out his hand above himself and feel it break the surface of the water. He was so close he could see everything, clear as crystal, through the lens of the water; so close he could almost taste the human air, see the creature that had blocked the light from his statue.

The creature was enormous, the size of ten monsters laid end-to-end; its skin was hard as stone, and thrummed with a heartbeat like the thrashing of the ocean, huge, echoing noises rumbling inside as though a fierce battle were raging inside its body. There were sounds of voices, a language he didn't know, an undercurrent to the crashings and bangings. He gasped the moment realisation came to him. This wasn't a creature; it was a cage. The creatures were inside - speaking - it was a _human_ cage.

The cage rolled alarmingly for a moment, pitching above him - no doubt thrown by a wave, and he was always amazed by the strength of the sea, even able to toss things the size of this cage as though they were nothing heavier than a shell in its palm - and a splash startled him, the sound of something landing in the water beside him. He dived in a flash of silver, terrified that it was a human's net trying to catch him the way they had his mother - he didn't know what a net looked like, of course, but surely it would have to make a noise as it entered the water - and as he turned to look, he saw a face sinking towards him, a body - a _human_.

He bit back a shriek. He was going to die - he was going to be caught in a net, skewered on a hook and eaten the way those barbarians did to every fish they caught - the human was going to kill him - until he saw that the eyes had drifted closed, and the body was going limp. The human was falling asleep under the water; falling asleep, and his breath was leaving his body in a stream of bubbles. But, Buchanan thought, he can't be falling asleep; humans don't breathe water...

The human was dying. He was no more a threat to Buchanan than the merman was to him.

Buchanan grabbed the human around the waist and swam fiercely towards the surface of the water - the crashing of the waves, the arcing of lightning and rumble of thunder growing louder in his ears as he grew closer - and dragged the human's head above the water, trying to force him to breathe his air. The human stayed limp, floppy; Buchanan tried everything he could, but remembered his father's warnings about the surface of the waves and the humans. _If they can see you, they can catch you. You must stay down here, hidden, where they can't see. They're animals, Buchanan, murderers. They killed your mother_.

He obeyed his father, hid his face beneath the human's slim back as he tried to lift the whole limp body out of the water. _They can't see me. I'm below the water - I'm safe. But it's not waking up_...

"You can't sleep here, human," he told it desperately, trying to think of what to do. He couldn't let the human drown, although that was all his father said they were good for. Perhaps he was too tender-hearted for his own good, but the moment he'd seen the human's face drifting towards him through the waves, he'd felt something. A kinship, perhaps. The human was his to save.

Another shape - a gnarled, twisted hunk of driftwood - floated above him, and he grabbed it in one strong hand whilst holding the human to his chest with the other. Its head lolled to one side, he looked down - and almost dropped both.

The human was beautiful - even more beautiful than his statue. Wheat-sheaf yellow hair, like the Queen's and his sister Ula's; its eyes were closed, but the lashes were long and thin as gossamer, webbed on its cheeks and soaked with the water, fair-tipped as though dipped in gold. Its nose was strong, straight for all but a slight bump at the top where it smoothed into the space between its eyebrows. And the lips - the lips were as full and softly-curved as his statues, hanging slightly open as the human let out another, weaker stream of bubbles.

That kicked him into action. Slinging the human over the piece of wood - driftwood was often found during storms, even if it didn't come from the cage the human had dropped from - he gripped the end still hanging beneath the water and swam, towing the human as far as he could manage. Hoping that somewhere, anywhere, there would be land - land, or another human in another cage, who could take Buchanan's human and keep him safe - let him be saved from the waves that had almost swallowed him.

Several times the human almost slipped off the wood, and Buchanan had to resettle him; eventually he pulled off the chain of kelp and rusted iron links he wore around his waist and bound the human to the wood, continuing to drag him in the only direction he could - forward. He was growing tired, exhausted from dragging the dead weight of the human and the wood behind him, using only his tail to force himself through the water in case he let go by mistake - when suddenly, Buchanan could see shapes beginning to manifest themselves above him - the bottoms of more human cages, the sea bed beginning to rise towards the surface of the water. Land. He risked swimming closer to the surface - so close his upturned nose almost brushed the air - to search for any visible, dangerous humans before approaching the nearest cage and banging with his fist on the bottom.

Movement like the scurrying of crabs across the palace floors sounded from inside, and he heard a cry - "Man overboard! Hard a port!" before letting go. The human began to slip again, the chain quickly unravelling from around its spindly, now red-marked wrists, before a net - he assumed that was what it must be - dropped into the water and scooped his human out, lifting him into the cage. Buchanan watched from beneath the cage's solid bottom, hidden from any peering eyes, and reached out a hand in goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Colonel Phillips is Captain in this, because according to good ol' Wiki, that's the Navy equivalent of his Army rank. (However, as my university tutors love to remind me, Wikipedia isn't always the most accurate source, so if that's wrong, please do correct me!)
> 
> **Ship vocab:**
> 
> _Aye aye, sir_ : The equivalent of 'Sir, yes sir!' Acknowledgement that an order has been given, and spoken with the intent of carrying it through. Saying 'Aye, sir' or 'yes, sir' has the connotations of 'I heard what you said, but I (might) ignore it'. Basically, if you've been told to do something, it's 'Aye aye, sir', or you'll get a bollocking for insubordination. Never fun. (Speaking from experience, if you couldn't already tell!)  
>  _Galley_ : Kitchen.  
>  _Heads_ : Toilets. I know, it makes no sense, but there you go.  
>  _Seabee_ : A member of the United States Naval Construction Forces (NCF). 'Seabee' comes from the abbreviation 'CB', which in turn comes from Construction Battalions. ([Wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabee)) They build stuff.  
>  _EM2_ : Electrician's Mate, Second Class. Someone who holds the rate of Petty Officer, Second Class and is in the specialised Electrician branch. According to [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrician%27s_mate): Electrician's mates stand watch on generators, switchboards, control equipment and electrical equipment; operate and perform organizational and intermediate maintenance on power and lighting circuits, electrical fixtures, motors, generators, voltage and frequency regulators, controllers, distribution switchboards and other electrical equipment; test for short circuits, ground or other casualties; and rebuild electrical equipment, including solid state circuitry elements, in an electrical shop.


	6. Oyster-girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve wakes up after being rescued to a familiar (to us!) face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed, again.
> 
> Quonset Point is a real US Naval base!

_As I was going down Bishopgate Street,_  
_An oyster-girl I happened to meet_  
\- traditional

He awoke with a wet cough before vomiting a stream of brackish seawater over his chest and the slippery deck beneath him. Someone's hands - rough and covered with calluses on the fingers and inner-palm knuckles - were pressing on his chest, clearly halfway through trying to pound all the water out of his lungs. He waved weakly, trying to push them away, and the person let him go as his vision cleared and brought into crystal clarity the face of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, leaning over the shoulder of the man who presumably had what felt like _broken_ several of Steve's ribs trying to revive him.

"Thank goodness," the woman sighed in relief, her voice soft, husky and with a clipped British accent, "we thought we'd lost you."

"Welcome aboard," the young man said, in the more familiar tones of perhaps Maine or Rhode Island, struggling up from his kneeling position with difficulty. Steve noticed that one of his legs seemed curiously heavy and clunky, and that he supported himself on a crutch when standing; injured, perhaps, or else weak of constitution like himself. But the man looked hale and hearty enough. Weather-burned face, strong jaw and chin - but with the same kind brown eyes as the woman still hovering over his shoulder. Both of them were dressed in oilskins and sou'westers, hiding almost everything from his view except their faces, hands and oversized gumboots.

"Thanks," he spluttered, still coughing wet globs of seawater up, and gestured apologetically to the deck. "Sorry about the puking everywhere."

The woman smiled, leaning down to pull him up. "Not to worry. Better out than in, as they say." Her hands were warm, as rough as her husband's - unusual for a dame, although perhaps not surprising given that she clearly worked the boat as well - and strong, but small, dainty almost, fitting neatly within his own. He smiled back as confidently as he could manage, and she stood back to afford him a bit of breathing space, before sighing and pressing her fingers to her temples.

"Oh, how rude of us - I'm Margaret Sousa, Peggy, and this is my husband, Daniel." She held out a hand to shake, which he did, and then did the same with her husband.

"Steve Rogers. Previously of the United States Navy, although they've probably long since left me behind." He sighed. He had been doing so well with Dr. Erskine in the med bay, as well...

Margaret - Peggy - frowned, glancing at her husband. Daniel looked over Steve's shoulder at the harbour before turning back to him, removing his sou'wester to run a hand through salt-matted hair. "There's a naval base not far from town. I'd be happy to take you around later, once you've got your strength back - see what they can do for you?"

Steve felt a rush of gratitude towards these strangers, and nodded eagerly. "That's real kind of you, sir. But I don't wanna impose. I can find a place in town easy enough, I imagine. Three's a crowd, after all."

Daniel laughed, shaking his head. "Of course not. No imposition at all. Peggy gets awfully lonely whilst I'm away on Lady here-" he patted the railing of the boat affectionately, smoothing his fingers over the rusting mooring cleats. "You'll do us good for a few days, if you do want to stay."

"We don't live on the boat,  Mr. Rogers," Peggy elaborated with a warm smile. "It's Daniel's fishing boat, for work. We live above the oyster house just there-" She pointed towards a whitewashed building with blue-shuttered windows and a shale roof, the end of a terrace on the sea front, "where we work during the day. Daniel sends the boys out on Lady to fetch the fish in; it's a stroke of luck that you washed up just as they were about to set out." She looked to her husband. "Sun's up, darling; it's time you were going. Come on, Mr. Rogers," she grinned, "I'll give you the grand tour."

She looped her arm through his in a friendly manner and tossed a brilliant smile to her husband over her shoulder. He grinned and waved his sou'wester at her as several young men ambling along the harbour caught sight of him and scrambled to join him on the boat.  
"Don't you go getting him in any more trouble, Peg!"

"I'm sure she won't," Steve tried to reassure him, and then blushed when Peggy laughed, eyes glittering with mischief, and towed him away across the street towards their house.  
  


* * *

  
It was a companionable few days that Steve spent at the Sousas' home, sat in the kitchen on the sill with an order book on his knee, sketching whilst Peggy stood over the bubbling oyster soups and clam chowders singing softly to herself, music hall songs and swing band favourites. Her favourites were the Andrews Sisters, and Glenn Miller; once, with her eyes on Steve as she did a neat little two-step beside the pot, she sang _Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy_ , laughing when he turned red from the collar of his shirt to the tips of his ears.

It turned out that Peggy loved to dance. At night, when the parlour was closed, Steve would be enlisted to clear the tables from the main shop floor, stacking them one on top of the other around the walls to leave an empty space in the centre. Daniel would choose a record, and Peggy would pull off her apron and swing right into a Lindy hop, spinning and pattering over the floor in her low-heeled shoes. Daniel was even less of a dancer than Steve himself, because of his leg, so it was _Steve_ that she would always whirl out onto the floor with her; _Steve_ who she would laugh at as he stepped on her toes, gently taking his hand to patiently lead him through the steps until he could almost cobble together a decent effort. Daniel would watch, a fond smile on his face, and call out timings and corrections. It was altogether a satisfactory arrangement, and Steve even managed to have fun.

Perhaps it was all about finding the right partner. Or any partner at all; the girls at home had never wanted to dance with a guy they could step on, a guy shorter even than themselves. But Peggy didn't seem to mind. She just did her thing, with flair and panache, and Steve allowed himself to be pulled along for the ride. It felt too good to finally have someone, not to.

He couldn't stop watching her, her every movement, every breath, every parting of those neatly-rouged lips and twinkling brown eyes. Daniel being out most of the day fetching and bringing in the fish, barrels of clams and oysters on ice and pots of crab and lobster; lines of plaice and cod and herring, everything the sea had to offer, was almost too convenient. It left him hours alone with her in the kitchen, trying not to flush scarlet every time she threw a teasing comment about his concentration on his drawings, asking if it was a pretty girl who'd caught his eye outside that he was so intent on. He didn't feel able to tell her that if it was any pretty dame, it was _her_ ; that he was as infatuated with her as ever a man could be. He didn't think Daniel was the jealous, overprotective type, but he didn't want to find out, either.

Every so often, when her cooking brought her over to his side of the kitchen, she'd try to sneak a peek over his shoulder at the pad on his knee; every time, he'd flip it over quick as a wink, and she'd laugh at him and fondly roll her eyes. He couldn't help himself; she didn't make it any easier for him. The first dame to give him the time of day, and he was head over heels.

He felt guilty as sin for infringing on her life with her husband. Couldn't help the sick feeling in his stomach whenever Daniel gave him a friendly smile and asked after him as he dragged another barrel of fish into the kitchen; couldn't bear to smile back from where he was wearing _Daniel's_ clothes and staring at _Daniel's_ wife and say, _Fine_ , when he was thinking, _I'm falling in love with your girl behind your back_. He began taking time out of the kitchen to walk around the town. Anything to get away from that steamy, claustrophobic kitchen where he could smell Peggy's perfume over the salt and brine of the oysters and feel her dancing eyes on the back of his neck, wishing it were her hands. Or her lips.

Daniel was as good as his word. After three days of Steve helping out around the parlour and loitering in the kitchen, he pulled him aside after breakfast to take him to the Navy base at Quonset Point. Steve took his hand, thanking him with a level of gratitude that probably bordered on overkill, and eagerly headed out the door. Daniel waved goodbye to Peggy in the kitchen and walked out to join him, limping heavily on his uninjured leg.

"You and Peg seem to get on like a house on fire," he said, smiling, as he set his hat on his head and spun his keys around on his finger. Steve nodded slowly.

"Yeah, she's a great gal. You're a lucky man."

"I am," Daniel agreed, smiling fondly. "Never thought she'd go for me - tried to put her off, even, what with the leg and all - but Peg knows what she wants, and she wasn't having none of it."

Steve smiled - genuinely, which surprised him - and nodded. "I got that impression."

"She speaks highly of you, too, y'know," Daniel said, gaze connecting with Steve's for a moment before gently redirecting him across the road: "No, you want to turn here - can't stop talking about you. Says you're quite the artist."

"It's not a big deal," Steve mumbled, blushing. "Just doodles, y'know - scribbles, on scraps an' napkins and things-"

"Peggy's never lied to me before," Daniel smiled. "If she says you're good, you're good. She ain't ever been nothing but honest." He paused for a moment. "Could you do something for me? Just as a favour - I don't want to pressure you, you can say no-"

"Daniel, if anything I owe you for pulling me outta the water, and then some for letting me stay. Whatever it is you want me to do, shoot." Steve answered earnestly. Everybody must know by now that he had a real soft spot for Peggy; but he liked her husband, too. That was what made him feel so guilty. If he could do this one thing for Daniel, it might make him feel like he hadn't been betraying him so badly - like he wasn't just hanging in the background, waiting for some slip-up between the pair of them to let him have a chance with Peggy. He'd never do it, of course - he wasn't that sort of guy, and he desperately hoped he never would be - but his brain kept telling him that that was exactly what he was doing. _Creep_.

"Could you maybe draw her for me? I've always wanted a real artist's sketch of her done - something to hang in the hallway, where everyone can see her. She doesn't deserve to be cooped up back there in the kitchen, even if she says she doesn't mind."

Steve swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. "Sure," he managed. "I can do that."  
  


* * *

  
That evening, Steve begged off Peggy's invitation to dance in favour of sitting on one of the stacked tables, a real sketchpad on his lap, to draw her as she danced. Daniel had, for the first time Steve had witnessed, accepted in his place, and was carefully limping around the floor as Peggy sang along to the swing song on the radio. Her head was thrown back, eyes alight with pleasure, red lips parted around a laugh; her skirt swirled around her shapely legs, and her blouse accentuated her generous bust and tiny waist. She looked like an Elvgren pin up, and Steve was desperately trying to tamp down on his blush to prevent her from noticing _him_ noticing that fact.

The sketch quickly came to life beneath his fingers; wide dark eyes, thick black lashes, full lips painted and laughing. Daniel excused himself, worn out, a few minutes into the dance and joined him by the table, watching him draw. Steve felt even more self-conscious with her husband there at his side, witnessing him trying to pin down the vision of perfection that Peggy was into graphite and paper. Daniel let out a low whistle.

"Peg was right."

"You think so?" Steve asked, unable to deny the small burst of pride Daniel's words gave him. Daniel looked up at him and nodded.

"I told you. She's never anything but honest."

When the song finished, Peggy came over to see what they were talking so secretively about. Catching a glimpse of the drawing - now finished, with Steve carefully signing his name and the date at the bottom of the page, she gasped and laughed with pleasure, grabbing his hands in delight.

"Steve! It's beautiful! Gosh, I'm a lucky girl, with such a talented man to draw me-"

"It was all Daniel, honestly. He asked me to draw you, and you know I'd never be able to say no after all you folks've done for me-"

"Really, Steve, it's wonderful. Thank you so much! Daniel, we must have it framed-"

"It's going right there," Daniel said to her, arm around her waist to support himself as he pointed at the nearest wall. "Front of house, where everyone can see you, instead of you being hidden behind those doors all day. People should know what a beauty I've got waiting for me every time I walk through these doors, don't you think, Steve?"

"Absolutely," Steve answered, a warm feeling in his chest, and Peggy beamed at them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Oyster Girl_ : [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-BIYUkTfGo)  
>  _Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy_ : [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qafnJ6mRbgk)  
> One of my favourite (and very fitting for this chapter!) Elvgren pin-up paintings, _Fresh Lobster_ :  
> 


	7. Human and Merman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buchanan comes to realise why going to the surface is so dangerous.
> 
>  
> 
> **TRIGGER WARNING: DROWNING**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed. 
> 
> Also, I have attempted to do my research re: what drowning actually feels like, but thankfully I've never experienced it myself so it may not be (entirely) accurate.

_"Your tail will divide and shrink until it becomes what human beings call 'pretty legs'. It will hurt; it will feel as if a sword were going through your body."_  
\- Hans Christian Andersen

The Merkingdom was in a roil of panic. The Prince had been discovered missing overnight when the Queen went to fetch him for dinner; Buchanan was nowhere to be found in all of his usual haunts and hiding places, which left only one conclusion: that he was somewhere he shouldn't be. And so, when he finally came back, limp and pale with exhaustion, eyes too bright, the royal guards were waiting for him and he was cast immediately into the prison, where he was kept until the King came to see him when the human sun was setting blood-red beneath the waves.

"Where did you go?" Pelegios demanded, eyes flashing with fury. The King was a fearsome sight in his temper; Neptune himself would have run and hidden from those blazing eyes, the strong set of his mouth and the fierce energy crackling around his hair like lightning.

Buchanan did not even answer. He was absorbed in sitting at the window, watching the sun set and thinking about his human, gazing out through the panes of amber and wondering if, perhaps, the human had in turn wondered about who it had been rescued by. He wondered if he would have been afraid, had the human opened his eyes and awoken. He felt sure that he wouldn't; that he could never be afraid of someone so beautiful.

"The whole kingdom was out looking for you! Buchanan!" he roared, grasping his son's chin with one huge hand and forcing him to turn his head and meet his father's eyes. Fear and anger burned in the King's gaze, but his son's was soft and faraway, absent from the dingy barnacle-encrusted room he was currently locked in. The Prince smiled, watching the sunlight wash his father's hair with russet and ochre and gold; he felt its warmth over his chest, as though the human's body was once again pressed against him, and laughed with delight. The King let him go in shock.

"Buchanan, this is no laughing matter - the Prince cannot go missing on a jaunt whenever he likes, and turn up laughing and smiling as though nothing is wrong!" His tone lowered, worry finally showing itself in the crack of his voice. "Buchanan, answer me. Where were you?"

"Father," Buchanan beamed, taking his father's hands, "Father, I saw one. A human! He had fallen into the water during the storm, he was sinking until he landed almost right in my arms - he was so soft, so beautiful.... Father, he was wonderful." He wasn't thinking of the laws, nor even of his mother and the fisherman's net. The only thing that filled his mind was the human's face, thick dark lashes fluttering over his cheeks like the fronds of his sun flowers' petals, the curve of his lips, the feeling of his strong, cool hand in Buchanan's as he tried to hold the beautiful head above the water to breathe.

 _Yes, father. I won't stray._ Buchanan had made that promise as a child, sat beneath the memorial tree to his mother - huge, pink, with weeping branches that brushed the sandy sea floor - and gazing up at his father with her silver-blue eyes. A child of five years old, laughing and smiling, so young and innocent. And now, ten years later, he was breaking it with another smile on his face, lovestruck and stupid. The King felt his stomach flip.

"A human," the King repeated, staring at his son in horror, grasping behind him to support himself on the grille of the cell door. "A human! You went to the surface! A _human_ \- you let a human _go_ , you let a human _live_ , you could have gotten yourself and every other merfolk killed - _you stupid boy_! Do you never _think_ , Buchanan? Do you not remember your mother? Do you not remember how humans pulled her out of the water, mutilated her, threw her back in to me as though she were less than the dirt on their hands? You - a _human_! What would you have done if he'd taken you? Did you never think of me and your mother, of your sisters? What could _we_ have done to save you, if that human had harmed you? They're barbarians! Murderers! They don't understand us and they never will, and - and if I hear of you going _near_ the surface again-"

"Father-" Buchanan cried, grasping at the King's hands in desperation, "Father, please - he would never hurt me, I swear! You talk of them being monsters, murderers - but Father, he was no danger to me. I couldn't let him die - I couldn't let him sink, and drown. Father, please, I - Father, I love him-"

The King reeled back, staring at his son as though Buchanan had grown two heads. "No," he gasped, agony in his voice. "Tell me no, tell me you're lying to me - Buchanan, you can't love him - you're fifteen years old, you don't understand love - you can't - you're a _merman_! He's a human! _No_! I said you would be punished if you went near the surface again, but I cannot risk letting you go now. In fact, you will stay here - you will _stay here_ until you have learned that even if you are the Prince - even if you are my son - you must obey! You will not leave this room. You will not eat today, you will not have visitors. Until you understand; until you have _learned_ that this - this infatuation must end."

"Father, please!" Buchanan shouted, tears in his eyes. "Please, Father-"

"No, Buchanan, you must - you must stay here. For your own good."  


* * *

  
He cried, seemingly for hours. Sat by the window, cheek pressed to the cool panes of amber with a great pain in his chest, staring up at the dwindling sunlight, wishing this great tearing agony filling him would go away. He cried until there were no tears left, until the cold room no longer echoed with his sobs, until his breathing had slowed again to the usual steady in and out with the occasional hiccough making his ribcage spasm.

He gazed around the room with dull eyes, taking in the grilled ceiling dripping with fronds of seaweed and the curling, wiggling bodies of polyps, his father's guards making sure the Prince didn't escape. He shouted curses at them, beating his fists angrily against the walls - anything to make the pain in his chest seem lesser. The polyps simply blinked at him, casting glances  at one another before curling their tentacles softly, settling down to keep their endless watch on him. He curled up against the wall, the harsh, rough coral scraping his back until it bled.

"Father doesn't understand," he told them miserably, head bowed. The polyps only blinked, never answering - they never did. But having someone listen, even without a response, gave the Prince heart. He could at least try to make _them_ understand, mute as they were. "He doesn't - the human was no danger. I would stake my life on that. I did stake my life on that," he joked humourlessly. "But if he'd  only seen him - he looked like my statue in the garden-" Buchanan pointed out of the window to show them, and they blinked in that direction before fixing their thousand eyes on him again - "the most beautiful creature I've ever seen, merfolk included. When I saw him, it was like... I don't know what it was like. It was like I never saw anything at all before! He fills me up from my tail to the crown of my head, like wine poured into a glass - until I'm full of him and there's no room for anything, anyone else. I see the mermaids giggling behind their hands as I pass, and they're pretty, but they're grains of sand - an irritation chafing at my skin, because they can't fit and they won't, and they're rubbing against me trying to get inside but I'm too full.

"And then him - it's like my eyes are opened, finally, and I'm seeing the sun for the first time - the real sun, not just the light filtered through the water until it's green and murky and dull with salt and sand. He was so bright, like gold. He made me want to smile and cry, all at the same time. He makes me _so sore_ , here." He pressed a hand to his chest, biting his lip, feeling the urge all over again to both laugh and weep, for hours on end. "I never saw a person like him before. I never knew there were people like him before..." He trailed off. "Do you understand?"

The polyps blinked sleepily, the only response they could give. It wasn't a yes; but it wasn't a no, either. Buchanan smiled sadly.

"I don't think I do, either. I don't know anything anymore. Just him."  


* * *

  
He found it purely by chance. A hole in the coralled wall, where the shells and stone had worn thin, a tiny split beside the window, thin enough for perhaps a child to wriggle through. The polyps were, of course, still watching; but now, with mermen guards stationed outside the sea glass door, they were grown lazy in their vigil. At least the guards had brought him food today - his father having relented on his 'no meals' ultimatum - although it lay, untouched, at the foot of the door. He chipped slowly away at the wall with a piece of flint, picked up as he swam restlessly around the room, waiting for the call that he would be allowed to go. He needed to get out; he needed to go to the surface again, even if only for a moment. Even if only to catch a glimpse of his human; to fill his mind and heart all over again with that strong, quietly handsome face. (Not, of course, that he had forgotten it; merfolk have perfectly eidetic memories, and so Buchanan could remember every freckle on the human's cheek. Some humans also possess this talent - if you are one, perhaps you should look back in your ancestry for any trace of mer blood...)

The guards heard the chipping every so often, and shouted through the grill, _What are you doing, princeling?_

 _Nothing_ , he would call back, _just drumming on the floor. I have to amuse myself somehow_.

"You've got an excellent sense of rhythm," one - a young merman barely out of puberty, probably less than two years older than Buchanan himself - replied, before breaking into a ribald shanty he no doubt learned from one of the older, less inhibited mermen of the kingdom. His friend laughed and shoved him, joining in, and Buchanan grinned to himself, using the raised voices as cover to continue his painstakingly slow breakout.

The gap had widened to about the breadth of the window beside it when Buchanan deemed it ready. Listening to the guards - now singing yet another ribald ditty, and more involved in critiquing one another's singing voices to pay any attention to him - he edged closer to the gap, wriggling into it head-first. The walls were thick, and he realised too late that he'd cut it too narrow at the outside edge. He tried to force his way through, rocking his shoulders to loosen the stiff rock encasing him, but it was too tough, scraping at his shoulders and back and removing at least one layer of skin. He gasped in pain but continued to wriggle and contort himself in the hopes that he would fit; after several moments of crushing, agonising claustrophobia, he managed to wriggle his head and shoulders out of the wall. He was halfway out and just trying to manoeuvre his hips through the narrow gap when he heard the guards raising the alarm. Having seconds to get free, he gave an enormous tug - shrieking in agony when the harsh walls, seeming to grab and grasp at his lower abdomen and tail, took several centimetres of scales and skin off of him - before breaking free and making for the surface as fast as he could. The guards could try to follow him if they wished, but he was much smaller and slighter than they, and there was no way they'd be able to wriggle through if doing so had caused him this much pain and damage.

Still, they could call for backup and set the full royal guard on him. He had to get to the surface - get to _land_ \- as quickly as possible. As he got closer to the surface, he recognised the shape of an enormous human cage in the distance. The clamour of the guards yelling for him to come back and attempting to chase him - weighed down by their armoured uniforms and helmets - barely registered in his ears; he was fixated on that lumbering dark shape and the safety it would provide. Humans wouldn't hurt him. He was sure of that.

No more than his father would, anyway.

He reached the surface with a gasp, throwing his head back and feeling his long hair whip against his face - until an invisible cushion clamped over his nose and mouth, a searing pain in the sides of his neck and his tail, and he choked on seawater as he was dragged, shrieking and spluttering, beneath the surface.

He fought to break free, clawing at his tail with sharp fingernails, desperate to get those tearing hands off his body - and screamed, in a stream of panicked bubbles, when he saw that his tail was gone and a pair of long, blanched white human-tails were frantically kicking beneath him. There was something - an enormous pair of translucent, smoky dark hands and glittering green eyes like the glowing of hellish embers - wrapped around his ankles, dragging him deeper and deeper into the water. He couldn't breathe, couldn't fight - his head was swimming, lungs screaming as he tried to pull air or water or whatever he could breathe now into them and failing - he screamed, fear making his heart pound and his temples throb with his pulse, and he struggled almost free for a moment before the hands locked tight around his ankles again and gave a yank.

He was crying with fear, in that moment wishing for the guards to find him, for his father to find him - he would take punishment and confinement over this, being dragged inexorably down, airless, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but cry and think, _I'm dying_ \- when hands - new hands, white, callused, human hands - wrapped an arm around his chest and a body with slim, rough material-clad legs kicked behind him, wrenching him above the surface to gasp and cough and die all over again. He sobbed, gasping for air, his heart still fluttering in his chest like an overexerted hummingbird, cries he didn't even realise were coming out of his mouth echoing like thunder in his ears - until he was thrown unceremoniously down onto a flat, hard surface and those hands pounded on his chest until he vomited seawater all over them.

His eyes - blinking water, tears and salt out from between his eyelashes - slowly focused on his rescuer's face, and he let out another shrill, inhuman shriek.

 _The human_.


	8. A smile that could light Brooklyn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has rescued Buchanan from drowning, and they settle into life onboard the boat. (Suspend your disbelief, folks).
> 
> Slight sexual content - not reciprocated, and not explicit - but, as Buchanan is fifteen, it might make some people a little uncomfortable. Just a head's up. If that's not something you're comfortable reading, you could either skip the chapter entirely or just skip between the two page breaks!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed, again.

_The men could not understand the mermaids' songs; they thought it was the wind that was singing._  
\- Hans Christian Andersen

 _I spoke last night to the ocean_  
_I spoke last night to the sea_  
_And from the ocean a voice came back_  
\- Irving Berlin

Steve startled backwards at the shriek that came bellowing out of the soft, plush mouth beneath him. The boy - because a boy he surely was, with a stocky frame and soft, square-jawed face - was shaking, still coughing seawater out of his lungs. But his eyes, silver and blue and green and black by turns, as strange and tumultuous as the sea, were fixed on Steve's face, and he shivered in the blanket the blond wrapped around his strong shoulders. Steve pushed his long wet hair back off his face, and the boy closed his eyes, leaning into his touch gratefully. It made Steve's stomach flip pleasantly, and he allowed himself to comb his fingers through the long dark locks before remembering himself and pulling away with a cough.

The crew of the USS Abercrombie were crowded around them, amazed by skinny Steve Rogers having pulled this kid one and a half times his own size out of the water. He helped the kid to his feet, wrapping an arm around his shoulders; the poor thing was still trembling, and his legs were as weak as noodles, barely keeping him upright on the gently rolling ship deck. He was looking at Steve with awe, though, eyes alight and mouth slightly agape as though he'd never seen anyone so wonderful before, and he had to admit it was doing wonders for his ego. He wrapped the blanket a little tighter around the kid and gently asked his name.

The boy looked at him in confusion, brows knitted over frightened eyes, and this time he flinched away when Steve tried to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Steve repeated the question and got the same response.

"D'you not speak English?" he asked slowly, gently, gesturing to the boy. He received only silence in response, although the boy stared intensely at his mouth and made a strange croaking sound as he imitated the movements of Steve's lips. The smooth bowing and pursing of those full, coral-red lips made Steve hot all over for one intense moment before he cleared his throat and pressed his hand to his chest, speaking his own name equally slowly and clearly.

"Steve," he murmured, watching the boy for any sign of comprehension.

"Throw him back in, Rogers," Hodge laughed behind him, "he's dumb as a post."

Steve whipped around to glare at Hodge, fury rising under his skin. He'd have hated Hodge anyway, purely for the way he was always throwing his not-inconsiderable weight around on deck; always making smart-ass remarks back to the Petty Officers, especially the one woman on board, and intimidating the recruits and apprentices simply because he was an E-3 fireman himself and therefore considered himself higher on the pecking order. But mocking a kid who'd just been pulled out of the sea after what was probably one of the most traumatic experiences of his life made Steve see red. He'd never liked bullies.

"Maybe I should throw you in, Hodge. See how well you swim."

"Hosh," the boy said, in a lilting, husky voice like the wind blowing over sea spray, and Steve glanced at him, a smile breaking out over his face. He grinned widely at the kid, proud of him for proving Hodge wrong - not so dumb after all - and the boy smiled back, pointing to Steve with one long finger.

"Hosh."

"No, Steve," he said gently, taking the boy's hand and pressing it to his own chest. "Steve."

"Teef," the boy repeated carefully, brows creased in concentration, and Steve nodded. "Teef'll do. Steve-" he pointed at Hodge, "-Hodge." He pressed the boy's hand back to his chest, touching him just under one bare nipple - the blanket having slipped open to his navel - "who?"

"Who," the boy repeated, gesturing to himself. "Who."

"No, what's your name?" Steve said gently, before being interrupted by the Captain storming down the steps from the pilothouse and hollering his name.

"ROGERS! You're soaking wet, what the hell've you been - what the hell is that dripping all over my deck?"

"Man overboard, sir. I saw him off the starboard side."

"Rogers dived right in, sir," Wilson said from beside him, a smart gappy-toothed black guy from Washington that Steve recognised from PT back at base camp. "Dived right in and pulled him out, saved his damn life. He's a hero."

"Wilson, was I speakin' to you?" the Captain snapped, before relenting with a grunt. "He's a soggy liability to his own health, right now. Rogers, take the kid to the sick bay - and get yourself a checkup whilst you're at it. I ain't losing another seaman, too much damn paperwork. Go on, git. The rest of you, as you were."

A chorus of "Aye aye, sir!" went up around them as Steve took the lead towards the med bay, the boy following behind with the soft patter of bare feet.  
  


* * *

  
Buchanan soon managed to grasp enough of the strange, boxy language of these humans to understand simple things like names and the words for some items of clothing. He learned his human's name the fastest, of course - kept repeating his new vocabulary so often under his breath, watching the human turn round every time he murmured 'Teve', that he quickly made the leap. He was overjoyed to have a name to put to him - a name to match the kind face and clever, patient blue eyes. He'd never seen eyes that colour - so deep a blue they were almost green, the colour of the ocean at its deepest point around the palace at home. Teve was kind, patient; he never seemed to get frustrated with Buchanan getting excited and pointing at every item in the room, demanding to know what it was called. The only downside, of course, was the language barrier itself. Teve couldn't understand even the shortest words in Mermish, but Buchanan was a fast learner and soon began to cobble together short strings of the human language.

"Teve," he would say, and the human would turn around and smile, repeating his name back to him. _Sssssteve_ , he would hiss, evidently  trying to emphasise the part Buchanan had missed, and he would try - ten or eleven times, repeating it over and over as he struggled to articulate the sibilant hissing at the start - "Teve, Teve - Teeeve - Tttteve-"  - before getting frustrated with his lack of progress. Eventually, Teve sat him down in front of a mirror (another one of Buchanan's new words), and showed him how to shape his mouth around the letter - _Sssss, ssss_ \- until he giggled.

"Ssssss," he managed, and Teve beamed at him.

"Sssssssssteve." He gasped and blinked at Steve, throwing his arms around his neck in sheer joy at having finally gotten it right. Steve laughed right back, rubbing his back with one large, rough hand, and Buchanan nuzzled his nose against Steve's neck, inhaling deeply. He smelled like salt, spices and something dull and clean that made Buchanan's nose tickle. He dropped the towel, burying his head deeper in the crook of the human's neck and sighed happily, pressing his body tightly against Steve's - the human suddenly coughed and gently pushed him away, a brilliant red colour rising up from beneath his collar to his hairline, staining his face bright pink. Buchanan laughed and traced one cheek with a fingertip, until Steve pushed his hand away again gently.

"Do-don't," he mumbled, mouth tripping over the words, and Buchanan copied him, pointing at the sheet over the bed in the corner - the same colour as Steve's cheeks - and said, "Do-don't."

"No," Steve said quietly, " _bed_ , remember? _Bed. Don't_ is for - is for this," and he pressed himself against Buchanan, burying his head in the side of the boy's neck the way Buchanan had done to him. Buchanan sighed happily, knotting his hand in Steve's hair and rubbing his body against the human's, and Steve made a choking noise and stepped back. "No!"

"No?" Buchanan murmured sadly, eyes wide. "No do-don't?"

"No do-don't," Steve repeated firmly, and Buchanan nodded, disappointed. Steve's body was slim, knobbly beneath his uniform - but it had felt warm and welcoming pressed against his, and had created an interesting stirring sensation in the small appendage between his legs, which had grown warm and stiffened slightly. He rubbed it curiously, enjoying how it hardened against his palm, until Steve yelped and batted his hand away, face even redder - if that was even possible. "No! Jesus-"

"She-zus," Buchanan tried to repeat. Steve rubbed a hand over his face, muttering something he couldn't catch under his breath, and shook his head. "No. Don't - don't that, either."

"Don't." Buchanan nodded, gesturing to the little column between his thighs. Steve nodded, grimacing. "Don't," he repeated happily, pleased to have learned a new word. It was strange that Steve didn't like him to touch it - it was, after all, attached to his body, and it certainly felt pleasant when he had rubbed it against Steve's leg and with his hand - but he wanted to make his new friend happy, and if that was what kept Steve happy, then he wouldn't touch it. He was curious to see whether Steve looked the same beneath his trousers, but he didn't want to be slapped away again, so kept his hands to himself.  
  


* * *

  
Steve was given the all-clear by the onboard medic, as was Who (until the kid understood the meaning of _what's your name?_ , Who would have to do), and was told to return to his bunk with the kid to get him settled. Since Steve was only on the Abercrombie until they managed to catch up to the Miantonomah, the ship he'd been serving on before the run-in with the storm and Peggy and Daniel, he was in a temporary 'cabin' - meaning a gangway between the galley and the sick bay where they'd slung a hammock from one wall to the other. Leading Who to their lodgings, he spared a moment to cringe inwardly to himself. _Christ, what a shitshow that had been_.

The kid standing there, buck naked, in sick bay, rubbing his dick like a genie's lamp - like he'd never seen one before - Steve was flushing again just thinking about it. He wasn't a prude, but he was gonna have to try and teach the kid somehow that some things were just meant for behind closed doors, on one's own. And find him some goddamn clothes, otherwise he'd have a _naked_ , infatuated teenager trailing after him all the time. _Christ_.

"Steve?" Who asked, reaching for his arm. He turned around, trying to look as patient as possible. The boy was blushing nervously, his lip wobbling. He looked on the verge of tears. Steve felt his heart melt, and took the boy's hand gently in his. Who brightened up a little and smiled shyly, looking up at him from beneath thick, curling dark lashes like lace shutters. Steve had known for a long time that he swung both ways, but he'd never acted on it - and sure as hell wasn't about to start with a kid that looked barely over fifteen and who was clearly in a vulnerable position. Still, he let Who hang tight onto his hand, and even squeezed gently as he unlocked the door to their impromptu quarters.

The smile that lit the boy's face up at that gentle squeeze around his hand could've powered every streetlight in Brooklyn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Steve. Uncomfortable much?
> 
> Also, _I Threw A Kiss Into The Ocean_ (the Irving Berlin song whose lyrics I used above): [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baLsUp8Lp1g) (sung by Peggy Lee).


	9. Vocabulary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve finds his way back to his familiar crew and captain, and Buchanan receives his familiar nickname. (Featuring the appearance of other familiar names, as well!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is everyone ready for the appearance of Dum Dum? :D
> 
> Unbeta'ed, as ever. Any glaring mistakes, my fault and please do point 'em out!

_You've got to ac-cen-tchu-ate the positive_  
_E-lim-i-nate the negative_  
_Latch on to the affirmative_  
\- Johnny Mercer

The Abercrombie caught up to the Miantonomah a few days later when they both docked in Virginia to refuel and give the crew much-needed shore leave for the afternoon. Steve immediately headed to report to Captain Phillips, Who trailing behind him in one of Steve's spare shirts and a pair of his trousers. He had been worryingly quiet since the debacle in the med bay onboard the Abercrombie, but he couldn't be too sore with Steve because whenever he looked at him, the kid smiled shyly and his face lit up like a Christmas tree.

Captain Phillips was in the pilothouse when Steve reported to him after settling Who in his old bunk near med bay. The boy seemed nervous that Steve was leaving him, and clutched anxiously at his sleeve as Steve turned to go. _No, no, no_ , he'd murmured, shaking his head, _no_ \- his favourite word, like a toddler learning to talk. Steve just sat him down on the bed and told him not to move before shutting him in (more for his own peace of mind than for Who's safety; god knows what mischief the kid could get up to, allowed free rein all over the ship). He pushed the boy out of his mind as he snapped to attention, saluting and clearing his throat before announcing his arrival. The Captain looked up from his papers briefly to tell him, At ease, before shuffling the maps into a pile to fix him with his usual steely glare.

"If it ain't the erstwhile Hospitalman Rogers."

"Yes, sir. I've been serving on the USS Abercrombie after a pair of civilian boatmen pulled me outta the water, and they've kindly brought me back to base."

"A lucky coincidence, all in all," the Captain said, still unsmiling, still glowering at Steve from beneath his craggy brow. "You reported back to Dr. Erskine yet? Med bay is still running low on personnel, after your little diving trip. The ladies've been asking after you, as well," he said dismissively. "Report to him the minute you go, right, Rogers?"

"Aye aye, sir," Steve nodded, saluting again and turning to leave.

"I ain't done with you yet, Rogers. Get that scrawny ass back here and don't you dare lie to me when I ask you this question: what and who the hell is the little lost puppy pawing at my pilothouse door starin' at you like you're his goddamn long-lost mother?"

Steve whipped around, and sure enough, there was Who, nose pressed to the glass door panel, longing in his silver-blue eyes. Steve turned back to the Captain with a helpless expression, swallowing hard as he tried to tamp down his frustration. He knew it wasn't Who's fault he didn't understand what Steve was telling him half the time - the kid had a vocabulary of all of about ten words, most of which were some permutation of Steve's name and 'don't' - but was it really impossible for him to just _stay put_? It was driving Steve nuts having Who trailing after him all the time like the Captain said, a little lost puppy with eager, sad eyes and legs that still didn't seem to be able to keep his balance long on the pitching and rolling of a ship. He groaned, rubbing a hand over his face as he tried to think of the best way to explain himself.

"Spit it out, Rogers, I ain't got all day."

"Yes, sir. To be real honest, sir, I don't know who he is. He hasn't told me. He doesn't speak English. I saw him in difficulty near the Abercrombie when I was serving onboard, and I pulled him outta the water. Since then he's been kind of... joined at my hip."

"Well, unjoin him. He's not old enough to be on any Navy vessel, and god knows we don't need the inspectors ridin' my ass about having another civilian on board - a goddamn _child_ to boot - on top of our esteemed Doctor. We're docked for at least the next few hours. Find him somewhere to stay, give him his personal effects, then get your ass to med bay and report."

"With all due respect, Sir, he ain't got nowhere. Not even in the town. He isn't from around here. Can't he stay - you said med bay need more personnel. Let him serve with me. I'll take care of him. My responsibility. He fucks up, it's on me, I promise, sir. Just don't... don't make him go out there on his own. He's got no idea, he'll end up in a ditch somewhere."

"This isn't a strays shelter, Rogers." The Captain barked, eyes narrowing. "Exactly what do you think he's going to do, if he doesn't speak English, in the med bay? I'll tell you. He's gonna poison everyone who comes to him for a shot, because he don't know what the label on the bottle says. He's going to break bones, not set 'em, and he's gonna be a liability. I don't want any liabilities on my ship. _Dock. Him._ "

"Sir," Steve said quietly, standing his ground. "You called me a liability once, Sir. I'm here, and I've got a job, as much as you told me I wasn't worth your efforts. You turned me out good, sir. Give him the same chance you gave me, that's all I'm askin'."

The Captain stared at him for several long moments before waving him away resignedly. "Fine. But like you said, I'm accepting no responsibility for him. That's all on you. He fucks up, you've fucked up. Got it?"

"Yes sir."

"Get outta here," the Captain sighed, going back to his maps. Steve saluted and turned on his heel, opening the door and immediately receiving an armful of Who. The kid nuzzled up to him again, trembling lightly - _Christ, what had he done now?_ \- and grabbed at Steve's hand. He gently pushed him away, but let him keep their hands linked (he had a soft heart, after all, and it evidently gave the boy some kind of comfort to have some part of Steve touching him all the time. And he had such wide, trusting eyes that Steve couldn't deny him anything, not when the kid looked at him like he was all the sun in the sky).

"C'mon then, Who," he said gently, leading the way out. He tossed a "Thank you, sir," over his shoulder, and saw the Captain wave distractedly over his shoulder before the door swung closed behind them.  
  


* * *

  
He managed to wrangle Who a position in the galley after all, as the cook's assistant. All he would really be doing was washing the cutlery, maybe chopping a few vegetables, but it was something. And it'd keep the kid occupied whilst Steve served his hours in med bay, which could only be a good thing. He didn't like to think of Who wandering around the boat on his own and coming across one of the bigger guys who liked to pick on the seaman recruits. Every ship had 'em, and given Steve's record with bullies - especially Hodge - he was already on their bad side, and there was always the danger of Who getting hurt by association. He tried to explain to Who that he had to be careful around the other men, but it didn't seem necessary. The kid was on edge around every other fella on the boat; terrified would probably be a better word. He'd hang onto Steve's hand and hide behind him (as best he could, being almost as tall and already broader than Steve) like a toddler.

Steve got more than a few smart-mouthed comments about it, but he shut them up with a glare. Dugan was one of the most vocal ones, but to Steve's surprise and relief, not so much in a negative light as a curious one. He wanted to know about Who, where he came from, how old he was (none of which Steve could answer, beyond a guess), but he was friendly when he held out his hand for the boy to shake, and with a reassuring nod from Steve, Who allowed himself to take it and shake.

"Dum Dum," Dugan grinned, introducing himself.

"Dum Dum," Who repeated slowly, testing the name out. He nodded, satisfied - making Dugan and Steve laugh - and pressed his hand to his chest. "Who."

"I dunno, pal, you tell me," Dugan laughed.

"No," Steve explained, shaking his head. "He means, his name is Who. Or, well, that's what I've been calling him since he can't tell me otherwise. He doesn't seem to mind, so it ended up stickin'."

Dugan nodded. "Who it is. Who and Dum Dum, huh. Pair a oddball names, sounds like we're made to be firm friends."

Steve smiled, pleased that Dugan had taken to Who so quickly and without a fuss. Who seemed pleased to have made a new friend, as well, and he babbled excitedly in that strange, croaking language he sometimes mumbled to himself in whenever he was particularly excitable. Dum Dum cocked an eyebrow at Steve.

"What's he sayin'?"

"No idea, pal," Steve confessed, shrugging. "I mostly just go with it."

Dugan grinned, shaking Who's hand again. "Well, good to meet ya, Who."

"Good-meet," Who nodded sagely.  
  


* * *

  
The humans were confusing people, Who quickly learned. The man in the white costume who Steve took him to every morning was a gruff, quiet man who rarely spoke to him, which was strange after spending so long with Steve, who would murmur quietly to him all the time, pointing at things around the cabin and trying to teach him new words. But he was patient at least, and wouldn't grumble about spending a few hours every morning running through what he wanted him to do with hand gestures and the odd simple word he could quickly pick up; things like 'galley' (the name for the room), 'hot' (he learned _that_ one after poking the blue flames beneath the ring, whose colours reminded him of the cool driftwood fires they would light at home to light, and yelped in pain when it stung and blistered his finger), 'tomatoes' (small round red balls, which were thick with pulp in the centre and had a tangy, sweetish taste he rather liked), and ''fridge' (the huge silver box in the side room, where all the food that had to be kept cold was stored). He liked the fridge; the cold, dampish air inside it reminded him of home.

He missed it, every so often - missed his father, and sisters, the way the currents would stir the petals of flowers and make his hair stir softly against his face (he quickly discovered humans had something similar in the air, called _wind_ , and he laughed when it made his cheeks and nose feel cold and turn red). He would come back to the cabin after a day of working in the galley and recite his new words to Steve, who would grin and talk a bit more about them. The more time he spent around the humans, the better he began to understand their odd language and confusing body signals.

"Steve," he said one night, leaning over the bunk rail as the human sat on his bed below reading a book, "Who not me."

"Huh?" Steve looked up at where Buchanan's head was hanging over the edge of the top bunk. "Who's not you?"

"No," Buchanan said. "I is - is Boo-k'nan." He'd worked out how to approximate the sound of his name with human letters and vowels by practising his mouth shapes in the mirror the way Steve had done with him whilst trying to teach him to say 'S'; the closest he could get had a syllable or two missing, but he was proud of himself all the same. _And I even managed to string it together in a sentence_ , he thought proudly.

"It's _am_ , not _is_. _I am_ ," Steve corrected gently. " _I am_ B - Boo-kanon, was it?" Steve tried to repeat, frowning and watching Buchanan's lips. "That's a little hard for me, buddy. D'you mind if I call you Bucky?"

"Me - I... Bucky? Steve c-call-" he looked quickly at him to check he'd got the word right, and Steve nodded - " _I am_ Bucky?"

"Yeah, if I call you Bucky. Is Bucky okay?"

He thought about it for a moment. It didn't sound an awful lot like his name - but then, the human version of his name didn't sound right, either. But if it was a name that Steve had given him - that was different. Whatever name under the sun Steve wanted to call him, he'd accept and cherish. A piece of Steve, given to him. It wasn't like he got to choose his name the first time around. He didn't mind handing the reins over to Steve for his second baptism. And in any case, he'd been picking up on the fact that he was confusing people by being called Who (here, it was apparently usually a question, rather than a name), so he nodded.  
"Bucky is okay."

Steve grinned at him."Bucky it is."


	10. Bunk Beds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is slowly starting to realise the extent of Bucky's crush on him, and has to start taking evasive measures. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed as always. Bless you all for sticking with this ridiculousness!

_'Cause all I know is we said 'Hello'_  
_And your eyes look like coming home_  
_All I know is a simple name_  
_Everything has changed_  
\- Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran

Bucky learned that night that Steve suffered from nightmares. Nightmares that would have him moaning and crying out in his sleep, throwing his arms around as though trying to fight off invisible enemies; he would keep Bucky awake for hours as he bit his lip and tried to sniffle back tears, hesitating over going down below to try to soothe Steve back to a calmer sleep. After all, Steve's favourite word to use whenever Bucky touched him - tried to smooth his hair flat with his fingers, or traced the edge of his jaw curiously with one knuckle - was "No", and he didn't want to upset the fragile balance they had now.

Steve moaned again in his sleep, pained and fearful; Bucky could stand it no longer. He swung down the ladder and threw the covers back, clambering into Steve's bed and nestling himself between the human's flailing arms. He grabbed one before it could hit him in the face and wrapped it tightly over his back; rested his head in the crook of Steve's shoulder and flung his free arm over the blond's waist. Steve made another soft, frightened noise before sighing and slowly opening his eyes, still trembling and heart still pounding in his thin chest beneath Bucky's ear from the nightmare.

The boy was watching him with wide, damp eyes, plush lips reddened and bruised from where he'd been biting down on them with small, even teeth. Steve reached down and linked their fingers together, brushing his lips over Bucky's forehead affectionately, the way his mother had when he was a child and needed tucking in. Bucky was still staring at him when he leaned away again, mercurial eyes the only part of his face illuminated by the moonlight trickling through the porthole. It made Steve think of a lighthouse in a storm - everything else black and hidden and dangerous (because god knows a beautiful teenager was a danger, when there was a boatful of large, bullish men who'd probably last had a fuck several months ago when the Miantonomah last docked), but with the lights glowing fiercely to guide sailors home to safety. Bucky had something of the sea to him, when Steve pressed his face into the boy's wild dark hair; he smelled of salt, of brine and oyster-juice like Peggy and Daniel's fish parlour, and of the sky during a storm, crackling with the acrid, electrical scent of ozone.

Bucky closed his eyes and resettled himself against Steve's chest, and he allowed himself to pull him a little closer - press him a little tighter against his body - because the kid was shaking slightly, his hand in Steve's trembling as Steve brushed his hair back to tuck it behind one shell-like, translucent pink ear.

His head turned into the moonlight and Steve felt the sudden urge to draw him. He had a face like none Steve had ever seen before - hard planes of his cheekbones and brow, with a short, straight nose, that incredible strong, square jaw. The harder lines of his face were softened by the dark, thick fans of his eyelashes, the baby fat that still hung around in his cheeks, and the wide, full Cupid's bow mouth that hung slightly open as his breathing deepened into sleep. It was a mishmash of incredibly masculine and undeniably feminine features; fascinating in its contrasting shapes and textures (stubble beginning to come in, still soft and fluffy, around his jaw), and would be the perfect study. He waited a few moments before slipping out of bed, careful to tuck the covers around Bucky and wrestle one of the pillows underneath him for him to cuddle in place of Steve himself, and picked up the order pad he'd kept from Peggy and Daniel's parlour.

There were still the odd small, quick sketches - Peggy's eyes, her lips, Daniel in his sou'wester, a bee resting on one of the flowers in the windowbox - but he still had pages and pages free, creamy paper clear and as yet unmarked with ink and graphite. He searched in his bag - careful not to make any noise, lest he woke Bucky - and pulled out his tray of pencils, mostly stubs of builders' pencils he'd found lying around on the many construction sites he'd visited before they had time to tell him that he was in no way what they were looking to hire. Still, they had a use now, and he settled himself on the floor a few feet away and began to draw.  


* * *

  
Bucky woke up with a yawn and a stretch as the weak, watery dawn sunlight was beginning to filter through the clouds and into the cabin. He rolled over to say good morning to Steve, and found himself alone in the bed, one of their pillows pressed beneath his belly against the mattress. He sat upright quickly, looking around for the human - and saw him curled tightly into the foetal position on the floor, mouth gaping and quite frankly snoring for the world title.

He smiled. Slipping out of bed, he crossed the room to kneel in front of his friend and gently shook his shoulder. Laughed when Steve bolted awake and mumbled a frantic, half-asleep "Whassama'er?!" before rubbing his eyes and yawning to focus blearily on Bucky's face.

"Morning to Steve," Bucky grinned, and the human chuckled, ruffling his hair with one hand.

"Yeah, morning to you, too, bud." He yawned again and rubbed the back of his neck with a grimace. "Jesus, did I fall asleep on rocks, or what?"

"On the floor," Bucky said helpfully, pointing to where Steve had been curled up.

"Figures," Steve grumbled, and blinked at the sky outside the window, noting the sun just beginning to rise over the waves. "You going back to bed? We've still got an hour or so before you'll have to be awake ready for making breakfast for the rest of us." He stood up, arching his back, and grimaced again when it made a loud cracking noise before he rolled his shoulders and dropped like a stone onto his mattress.

Bucky tried to climb in with him, and Steve shook his head gently. "No, Buck, I'll be alright. I won't have enough time for another nightmare. You get back into your bed if you're going back to sleep, I'll see you in an hour." He yawned, rolled over, and was asleep within seconds.

 _Well,_ Bucky mused, _I suppose that's that_. Nevertheless, he did as Steve said, ascending the ladder once again and crawling under his blankets to go back to sleep. Like Steve, he was out like a light the moment his head touched the pillow.  


* * *

  
Bucky left the galley at 2100 hours that evening tired, but happy. The chef had given him his first, rare smile and praised him with a clap on the back and a spoonful of jam from one of the jars as a 'taste test' (Bucky's favourite treat, after tasting it the first time at breakfast on his first full day onboard the ship, and since then the chef had spent more time trying to keep his fingers out of the bubbling pots of fruit jam than any other hobbed pans); he'd pronounced it fantastic, and asked for more. The chef laughed and told him not to push his luck, but allowed him a tiny jar the size of Steve's compass as a reward for his good work.

Steve came into their shared cabin a few moments later, already stripping out of his shirt and pulling off his cap. Bucky held up his prize to show him, and Steve laughed and called him a 'sugar fiend'.

"I like sugar things," Bucky answered, batting his eyes coyly at Steve.

"I know you do," the human snorted, tugging his bootlaces through the eyelets, "s'a real sweet tooth you've got there."

"Aren't you to asking me what other sugar things I like?" Bucky grinned, his eyes bright with mischief, and the human rolled his eyes fondly.

"Aren't you _going to ask_ me," Steve corrected instinctually. "No, because I know damn well what you're gonna say and I ain't having it." He fixed Bucky with a steady gaze, shaking his head. "Buck, you know you're my friend, but it can't - I don't feel like that, okay? Not because you're not handsome - you're real pretty, and you know that as well as I do - but I can't be mixing with you like that, alright? That's why you sleep in your bed tonight, and every night from now on. Got it?"

"But I always sleeping in your bed," Bucky mumbled, his pleasure at having made Steve laugh sinking as his heart plummeted. "I like sleeping in your bed."

Bucky always felt an intensely guilty sort of pleasure whenever Steve had a nightmare. Felt guilty for staying up for hours at night, just so that the moment Steve started making those scared, pained noises he could fly out of his bunk and into Steve's, nestling into the warm space against his friend's chest and wrapping his arms around Steve's waist. He loved being the one who could make those noises stop; help Steve to stop trembling and flailing in his sleep by rubbing one hand gently over his chest, listening to his heart beating inside his ribcage and stroking his thin fingers over the fragile ribs sticking through Steve's skin like broken umbrella spines.

Not to mention the comfort he got from sharing a bunk. His bed, whenever he was made to climb back into it after a few hours of snuggling with Steve whilst the human fought off a nightmare - the few blissful hours before Steve forced himself to come back to his senses and kicked Bucky out again - always seemed cold, unwelcoming and hard. He couldn't sleep. He'd lie awake for hours, tossing and turning, pressing himself against the bars of the railings to try and convince himself he was back in the lower bunk - but it never worked. Now that he was used to sharing, a whole bunk to himself - even the tiny, cramped Navy single bunks - seemed far too large for him. Enormous, even.

Steve sighed. "I know you do, pal, but - it's not allowed, okay? We'll get into trouble. What if one of the other guys came in and saw us? What if Captain Phillips - or your boss - came in and saw us? You know what they'd do?"

"Closing the door?" Bucky said, brows knitted challengingly over his flashing eyes. He was crossing his arms like a petulant toddler getting ready to throw a tantrum, and Steve felt his patience slipping away from him - his saintlike patience, which this kid never failed to try to the absolute extreme. It was one of the things he both loved and hated, to the core of his being, about Bucky.

"No, Buck. They'd put you in your own cabin, as far away from me as you could get - or worse, take you off the boat entirely. You know you're not really supposed to be here anyway. The only reason you are is because I asked the Captain to let me look after you." He felt like shit for employing the guilt trip method, but it had the intended effect; Bucky backed down and rested his head on Steve's skinny shoulder with a sigh.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, Buck, but you've gotta bed down in your bunk from now on, okay? Can you do that for me?" He ran his hand lightly through the boy's tousled dark hair. Bucky sighed and nodded.

 _For you, anything_ , Bucky thought miserably. He fought the prickling feeling of oncoming tears, scrubbing at his eyes furiously with his knuckles until he was sure he could look up at Steve again without the watering giving him away. "Okay." _But I don't like it_ , he visibly added with a clench of the jaw and a momentary irritated frown.

It didn't matter. He'd given his assent, and that was all Steve wanted to hear.


	11. Cloudbusting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is missing home, and ends up giving Steve a scare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I've moved into my new digs ready for work - the only downside is, we've not yet got the WiFi set up, so this has been retyped out on my phone and submitted via the wonders of 4G. Therefore there might be even more errors than usual - I apologise, and once I get a decent internet on my beloved laptop I will look over it again!
> 
> Thank you for your patience, guys!

_But every time it rains_  
_You're here in my head_  
_Like the sun coming out_  
_Ooh, I just know something good is going to happen_  
\- Kate Bush

He could hear thunder. Bucky left the cabin when Steve was fast asleep - listening for the warning signs of nightmares that could wake him early - and slipped along the gangway, quiet as a prowling cat, to step outside onto the deck. As soon as he opened the door, he could taste the salt on the air, felt the wind slap him in the face with icy, damp fingers. Watching the waves pitch and roll beneath the ship - another storm brewing, with dark clouds hiding the weak moonlight and twinkling stars from his searching eyes - he was lanced suddenly with a longing so deep, so fierce, in the pit of his stomach that he threw himself at the railing, pressing his body against the hard metal to try and stop himself from vomiting. It _hurt_ , this intense - what was the human word? _Homesickness_ \- sitting there like a lump of lead, heavy and immovable, in his core.

He _missed_ it. Everything. The coolness of the water around his body (sometimes, being ensnared in human clothes, layers of material pressing against his skin or a thick duvet at night, felt like being slowly roasted. His core temperature would rise and rise until he felt dizzy, weak as a kitten, and had to throw everything off him. He often had to lie naked against the steel floors to try to cool himself down.) and its gentle press around him, lifting him effortlessly. He seemed to _weigh_ so much more on land; as though his body was trying to sink through the ground, compressing his strong spine and rendering his limbs weak with fatigue. It was no wonder he could barely walk. He wasn't used to legs in the first place, but with all this added pressure trying to force him downwards, it felt like he was again between those two ghost hands, this time one beneath the soles of his feet and the other on the top of his head, being crushed like a tin can.

He realised that on humans' _terra firma_ , he is as young, as naive and innocent and inexperienced, as Steve was always telling him. As his _father_ had told him, back in the palace prison cell. A naive little boy, starstruck and stupid on imagined love. A child, a baby; someone who didn't know their own feelings. Tears stung his eyes, and for the first time, he allowed himself to cry. He missed his father so badly that he would even have gone back now. Faced whatever music there was, to see the King's face again and feel his strong, kind arms around his back, press himself into the embrace and allow himself to come home at last. The King would be furious, _livid_ , but he could bear it. He would have to, if he wanted to see his father again.

And his sisters. He remembered when he was a child, playing hide-and-go-seek with Ula and Una, how his sisters had cried when they couldn't find him. He'd fallen asleep inside the linens cupboard, and didn't hear their increasingly desperate cries of his name. His father and the Queen had even joined in the manhunt, but it was the kitchen boy - a tiny, wispy blond the same age as Bucky but around half his size - who'd finally found him. Ula, Una and his father had been frantic. The Queen, cold with anger. He'd been sent to bed with no meals - _clearly, Buchanan, you're far too tired to eat_ \- and he couldn't blame her. He was constantly a thorn in her side growing up, always leading his younger sisters into mischief whilst their father was too busy to supervise or punish them.

They would be waiting for him, he was sure. At the palace gates, one either side, like a pair of angels guarding the gates to Eden in Steve's stories. Ula, with golden hair like flames, and Una with her burning yellow eyes like hot coals. The castle gates, coral and gold, would look like Moses' burning bush, fronds and tubes of coral twisting up towards the sky as they branched out like fingers of fire. He had seen illustrations in Steve's book, the small red leather-covered book he kept beneath his pillow and read to himself from when he bowed his head over his pillow at night - but Bucky had seen the real thing.

The ship pitched beneath him as it began to rain. Bucky tipped back his head, allowing the droplets to spatter over his face, closing his eyes. His heartbeat rose, pulse and thunder echoing in his ears, and the sky around him came alive with flashes of lightning, making the air crackle with electricity and the hairs on his arms stand on end. He had never felt more alive than during a storm; but never more inhuman. Steve, he knew, grew scared whenever storms hit, and would hole himself up in his bunk beneath the blankets and hum to himself to drown out the crashing and blasting outside. But Buchanan loved it, always feeling the urge to strip naked and throw himself into the water to enjoy it fully.

 _The water_... He could see his father again. Storms were safer for the merfolk; any humans tended to do as Steve did, and trap themselves deep within their metal-hulled ships away from the pounding waves. _He could dive in and go home, just for a short while_...

Yanking off his boots - barely bothering to untie the laces before kicking them aside - Bucky stared up at the sky, laughing with joy as it raged angrily above him. He pulled off his thick woollen Navy sweater, then the coarse, heavy shirt. His trousers, he left with his boots, until he stood, naked and almost luminously pale, against the railings, breathing the sea into his lungs and feeling the salt sting and burn.

He climbed up and over the side; hung there for a moment, like Steve's Jesus on his cross; and dived.

* * *

The moment he pitched into the water, his mistake hit him full force. Thrashing and clawing at the waves as they rolled and thundered over his head, stinging his eyes, filling his nose and mouth as he screamed streams of bubbles, over and over until his lungs were on fire and his head was bursting and he couldn't breathe -

Those eyes, those green demon's eyes, and the inhumanly strong hands knotted around his ankles, this time clawing towards his hips. Forcing his legs apart, nails digging into his thighs, cutting to the bone. Pain and fear and pure, airless panic washed through him until he could do nothing but let the darkness roll over him as he sank, down and down and down...

* * *

He awoke in med bay, soaked to the bone with seawater and sweat, blood - greenish and sickly - running down his thighs from small, deep puncture wounds. Dr. Erskine was bent over the bed beside him, admonishing the tall, robust figure who appeared to have also been for a swim for his ' _recklessness and stupidity, you idiot, you could have both been killed!_ ' Bucky craned his neck curiously to peer past the doctor and saw Dum Dum, eyes half-closed and mouth turned up in a smirk, brushing the doctor away with one enormous, meaty hand.

"Couldn't exactly've let the kid drown, could I, doc?" He retorted, winking at Bucky. "You know Rogers would've had my scro- my skin made into a wallet-"

 _Steve would never do that_ , Bucky insisted furiously in his head. Steve was a sweet, kind, patient man who would never hurt anyone. _Unless he thought it for their own good_ , his brain reminded him, thinking of Steve pushing Bucky gently out of his bunk that night months before after the chef had given him the pot of jam. All the pain of drowning - all the pain of the homesickness he felt, standing in the storm and staring down at the ocean dreaming of home - was nothing compared to Steve pushing him away. Bucky would've walked on knives for miles to get back home. But for Steve, he would have died. He'd shown it, time and time again - dragging him out of the sea, staying onboard this ship, risking every punishment his father could have thrown at him for that glimpse that told him his human was okay. It was his father who didn't know what he was talking about. Bucky knew damn well what it felt like.

The doctor was still berating Dum Dum (who was cheerfully not listening) when Steve burst through the door and headed straight for Bucky's bed, grasping him by the arm and shaking him until his teeth rattled. His hair was wild, eyes wilder; burning, roiling with anger, an expression Bucky had never before seen directed at him. He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Everything he did seemed to hurt Steve, one way or another. Guilt swamped him.

"-the _HELL_ were you thinkin', diving in there in this weather? Christ, Buck, you could've drowned - you could've _died_ \- you know what you did to me, scaring me like that? You little - you little punk! Me waking up in my bunk panickin' because I can't hear you breathing any more, couldn't see your hand danglin' down the side like it always does because you can't sleep straight to save your damn life - Jesus, Buck, I never been so scared in my _life_ \- don't you fuckin' _dare_ do that to me again, don't you _DARE_ -"

"ROGERS!" Dum Dum bellowed at the top of his lungs, making Bucky jump out of his skin and Steve only turn his head. Bucky was still paralysed in Steve's grasp, fingers locked around his arm leaving deep red marks that were undoubtedly going to bruise, and his stupid, traitorous eyes were rapidly filling with tears, his lip wobbling - he was such a baby, crying the moment Steve showed him any sign of anger or irritation - and he looked away, ashamed of himself, feeling the tears burn as they rolled down his cheeks. His lungs ached with coughing the water up, but the sobs hurt worse; the sobs, and the _shame_.

"Rogers, let him go. Jesus, you're scaring the crap outta him, and me and the doctor to boot. Let him go, for Christ's sake, before you rattle his teeth out of his head!"

"You don't get to give me orders, Dugan," Steve snarled, but let Bucky go nonetheless. He immediately pressed himself against the other side of the bed, as far away from Steve as he could get; cowering, crying openly, big, fat, messy tears that left grimy tracks on his face as snot bubbled from his nose. His heart was pounding in his ears; Bucky had never been so afraid of Steve, who usually looked like a good gust of wind would blow him to pieces. He'd never realised just how much strength was hiding in that tiny body.

Steve looked at the boy trembling in the corner of the bed, sobbing behind the thick dark curtains of his hair, and felt his heart break. Bucky would never intend to frighten him - he openly adored Steve, sometimes, unfortunately, rather too much - and he'd evidently scared the poor thing witless. He held out his arms carefully, murmuring apologies and crooning soft, soothing noises to him. Bucky hesitated for only a moment before scrambling gratefully towards him, burying his head in Steve's shoulder and nuzzling at his neck, hiccoughing and sniffling as his sobs subsided.

"C'mon, troublemaker, let's get you outta here." Steve looked up at Dr. Erskine, who gave him a small nod of permission to let Bucky leave. "C'mon, buddy, we'll get you to bed... You're gonna sleep like a rock after a fright like that, I can guarantee it."

Bucky nodded shakily into his shoulder.

* * *

Steve didn't have the heart to kick him out of bed that night, and Bucky was grateful for it. If anything, Steve seemed to get as much comfort out of it as he did, wrapping his arms tight around the boy's waist and burying his nose in the nape of Bucky's neck, inhaling deeply with shuddering breaths. Bucky leant back against him, still trembling slightly, but this time - even though Steve's grip was just as tight as before, and even with the panicked fingerprints bruising purple on his pale arms - he felt much safer. This Steve was gentle in his protective instincts; wrapping him up in blankets and warm arms and soft, reassuring words in his ear.

" _Bucky_ ," Steve almost moaned, voice cracking. "You know how scared I was when I saw you gone? I went just about out of my mind. You're my responsibility, pal - mine to look after, and when you go missin' it's like - it's like a piece of _me_ goes missing, right? You're part of me now, I gotta take care of you."

Bucky understood. He wasn't meant to be here, and never had been. He wasn't meant to be on this boat, in Steve's arms - in Steve's _life_. He was an unwelcome complication. But he didn't care; every time he looked at Steve that night and saw the fear and worry in his eyes, felt the constant fluttering of a hand petting his shoulder, as if to make sure he was still there - his heart leapt in his chest, and he fell a little more in love.

And maybe, with Steve's soft breathing against his spine, and the tightening of his arms around Bucky's waist as the boy turned to face him, he was doing the same.


	12. Six Lessons and a Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is lent a record player by the chef, and he's very keen for Steve to show him how to dance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, again, sorry everyone but I've still not yet got the WiFi set up, so this has been retyped out on my phone and submitted via the wonders of 4G. Therefore there might be even more errors than usual - I apologise, and once I get a decent internet on my beloved laptop I will look over it again!

_"Only if a man should fall so much in love with you that you were dearer to him than his mother and father; and he cared so much about you that all his thoughts were of his love for you;"_  
\- Hans Christian Andersen

Steve drew Bucky again and again over the passing months. Winter fell onto the ocean like a blanket, freezing the top of the water until rolls of slush-ice were noisily pounding the hull of the ship, crunching and crackling in the cold, still air. Every night, whilst Bucky slept, he'd lie awake and draw the hand dangling delicately between their bunks, the curve of his thick, dark lashes against his harsh cheekbones, or the swell of his full lower lip and the tips of his bottom teeth where his mouth hung slightly open on a snore. Bucky always slept soundly through it, unaware of the intensity of Steve's gaze lingering in his face and hands, the curves of his body beneath the thin bedsheets and the small, pinkish ends of his toes hanging over the end of the bed.

Some nights, Steve could barely breathe with how badly he wanted to take those broad hands in his, brush his lips over the bulging knuckles like a prince in a fairytale. He wanted to see Bucky's eyes open, watch the slow, sleepy smile spread over his face as he registered Steve kissing his hands like a man praying his devotions; everything Bucky showed his longing for, the moment his mermaid's eyes turned towards Steve's face.

That was what Steve often called him, now, in his head: the _Little Mermaid_ , the boy pulled out of the water with shaking legs he couldn't quite stand on, mute from lack of understanding, but with eyes so expressive - so mercurial, ever-changing like the water, silver and flashing blue and green and grey like the waves under a stormy sky - that he could only be part of the water himself. He fought it back, stuck his sketchpad irritably back under his pillow; or else, flipped to the pages filled with sketches of Peggy, her warm brandy-brown eyes and million-dollar pin-up girl red lips, to try and short-circuit the fantasies running through his mind back in the direction they should be going. Peggy was beautiful, curvy and smart as a whip with an equally clever mouth on her - and as unavailable as she was, being married to Daniel, she was more accessible (more _acceptable_ ) than Bucky.

But Bucky was like the sea, in so many ways; unpredictable, unmanageable, uncontainable - and so, so harshly beautiful. He'd shot up a foot in the past few months, now towering over Steve (not difficult, given Steve's distinctly diminutive stature), and his stubble had begun to come in fully along his jawline, dark and rough as sandpaper, a marked contrast to the lush femininity of his lips and dimpled cheeks and chin. But it was his eyes Steve couldn't ever look away from.

His sketchbook was rapidly filling up with crayoned sketches, all of them scribbled over in a fit of frustration when he looked up and their colour had changed again; a slight shift from aquamarine to turquoise, from sea green to forest green, uncontrollable and undrawable. Bucky would frown in concern and ask why he was scratching so furiously at the page, and it took all of Steve's willpower not to snap back at him, as though it were his fault that his eyes drove Steve crazy with the desire to portray and immortalise their every changing mood in crayon on paper. After hours of irascible scribbling out, Steve was struck by inspiration, and set his pencil to paper, Bucky's face taking shape in shades of grey.

He sketched the strong jaw, flicking short lines and tiny dots for the five o'clock shadow darkening Bucky's new ruddy skin, drew in the subtle curve of his nose and the impossibly long, beautiful lengths of his eyelashes. The Bucky in the drawing was looking towards him, but off-centre, as though out of a window behind his left shoulder, and his irises were filled with waves and constellations of stars, a whole world of sea and sky encapsulated in his gaze. Bucky's lips curved up into a Mona Lisa-esque smile, a soft, shy little twitch in the right corner deepening the dimple in his cheek. Steve found he ended up sketching more; a long, lithe body, with subtle muscles pushing under the fragile skin, padding out the squared-off frame gently. The body tapered into a shimmering, beautiful tail, carefully sketched to be catching the light filtering through the water, tail fanning lightly in the waves. Looking at the drawing, he realised two things: the first, that this was - _had_ to be - the _real_ Bucky, a creature of the sea unbound by humanity's weak limits; and two, that he had given himself away, and for that reason Bucky could never, ever be allowed to see it.

* * *

 

Bucky discovered on afternoon over a pot of chicken broth left over from that which he had been serving to the crew for their midday meal that the chef - newly (to Bucky) revealed to be named O'Toole - kept a small gramophone record player in his quarters, to play his albums. O'Toole agreed to loan it to him for one night as a treat (Bucky had quickly learned that he was something of a favourite in the galley, with his pure delight in carrying out his job and his bright, cheeky smile and expressive face).

He helped Bucky set it up in his and Steve's cabin that evening, and Bucky was watching the needle lower and raise on and off the record in fascination until he heard the door click shut and looked up. He beamed at Steve and received a smile back in hello.

"Where'd you get that, Buck?" Steve gestured to the record player.

"For you," Bucky replied happily.

"Yeah, but where did you find it?" Steve asked, frowning a little now. Bucky's smile dimmed slightly, thinking Steve didn't like his surprise.

"O'Toole chef said I to be keeping it for tonight, so I can hear the musics."

"He said you can keep it tonight?"

Bucky nodded. "I to wanting dance." He held out his hand to Steve, earnest eyes bright and today, in the strong fluorescent light in their cabin, brilliant aquamarine blue. Steve hesitated, trying to think of how to explain to Bucky that _men don't dance with each other, Buck_ \- but then he remembered that he hadn't danced since he'd been in Peggy and Daniel's parlour, and he loved music as much as the next man; so he allowed Bucky to choose a record at random and put it on the player, and he sat on the bunk to watch Bucky awkwardly try to move in time.

He recognised the trumpet intro of _Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy_ and laughed; he knew all of the words, of course - the song was a staple of Brooklyn dance halls, and as such he'd heard it enough times walking past them (rarely venturing inside, because he was many things, but a sucker for punishment in the form of rejection from multiple girls wasn't one of them) that he could sing along - and sing along he did, tone-deaf as ever, but Bucky looked delighted and even applauded. Call him punch-drunk on the attention, but Steve had to admit that he loved that Bucky was so enthralled by him making a fool of himself, and he even drew Bucky a picture of a boy blowing hard on a bugle in the corner of his sketchpad as a visual aid to the song.

Bucky, naturally, picked up his comb from the dresser and pretended to copy the drawing. Steve fell about laughing at him and his antics, and Bucky only grinned the wider from behind the stem of the comb, beaming at him. He put it down eventually and held out his hand again, asking Steve silently for another dance, and - surprising everyone, not least himself - Steve acquiesced almost graciously. He stumbled through a few steps, trying to teach Bucky the dances he'd learned in Peggy's hall; together they managed to shamble through an approximation of a jitterbug jive and a short two-step. Bucky laughed and laughed the whole time.

The next song was _Six Lessons From Madame La Zonga_ , and Steve threw up his hands into the air helplessly, chuckling that he had no idea how to dance to this Cuban tempo (Peggy hadn't owned many rumba records; she preferred the classics, like waltzes and two-steps and Lindies). Bucky nevertheless ended up making up his own kind of thing -

And Steve's mouth went dry. Bucky was as sinuous and silky as a stream of water when he was free to dance how he liked; his hips snaked and his shoulders and arms moved like ribbons in the wind as he slid quickly over the floor with bare feet. He pulled Steve up to join him, his eyes focused and blazing with the kind of heat Steve had honestly never really seen directed at him before - and suddenly stepped close, draping his arms around Steve's shoulders and pressing a leg tightly against his, curving it slightly around Steve's calf. He spun away, catching himself on the ladder of the upper bunk - he should've looked ridiculous, but instead, with his face set in pure, unadulterated passion and his body a constant fluid motion, seeming to flow across the floor rather than step - he looked incredible. _Desirable_.

Steve eventually even followed him, wary, steps halting - more allowing Bucky to coil himself around him and then shove away than anything else - but he took in the sweat beginning to bead Bucky's brow, the flush staining his cheeks cherry red, and the distended, blown pupils narrowing the blue of his eyes to a sliver, and felt a white-hot jolt of desire pelt through his body along his spine. Bucky couldn't have been older than seventeen now (and God help Steve if he wasn't, but without a birthday to go by, he couldn't even guess), but still, he was electric, every inch of him screaming for Steve to join him in this wild, animalistic pleasure of pressing their bodies together and dragging them away, the constant push and pull and grind of two dancers wrapping themselves around each other and feeling the heat between them build to sparks, and then to the blaze that would burn them both down together.

The music ended, and Bucky spun to a halt, breathing hard, flushed, and eyes wide and dilated. Steve cleared his throat with an awkward noise.

"You always dance like that?"

"We all to be dancing like that, where I am from," Bucky answered in his strange, lilting way. "Is much easier there, though. Not so many thick clothes."

 _Fucking Christ..._ Steve's mind _immediately_ flashed to the thought of Bucky in tight, light clothing like he'd seen in pictures of hotter countries, and he felt his entire body wash with heat, his face and neck blushing beet red. He was going to hell.

* * *

 

The last dance Steve would allow him - after another show like the _Six Lessons_ one, in which Bucky all but ground himself against the bedpost trying to show Steve how people apparently danced in his country - was slower, with a more conventional, 'dancier' beat (meaning, one that Steve might be able to at least shuffle to), an old Nat King Cole record. Steve wasn't much of a fan of the more upbeat swing numbers Nat King Cole usually played, but Bucky seemed to love it: he took Steve's hand and smiled happily as Steve pulled him into a kind of scuffling two-step far too slow for the music.

 _You_  
_Stepped out of a dream_

Bucky was smiling shyly to himself when Steve's eyes flicked up from his shoes (trying to make sure he didn't step on Bucky's bare feet with his enormous standard-issue Navy boots). Steve adjusted his grip on the boy's hand and tentatively rested the palm of his other hand on Bucky's back, feeling the blush that had been slowly receding flood back in full force.

 _You are too wonderful_  
_To be what you seem_

Bucky's mouth fell open in a small gasp as Steve's hand pressed gently, encouraging him to step a little closer. Confusion rocketed through his mind ( _this isn't what you think, remember Steve's rules - remember the_ no _'s, the_ don't _s, all of the days he got so cross when you tried to touch him under his shirt on his hip, or the corner of his mouth-_ )

 _Could there be eyes like yours?_  
_Could there be lips like yours?_ Nat King Cole crooned, and Steve found himself staring at Bucky, especially those luminous grey-blue eyes that always seemed to be fixed on his own face of late. He was equally guilty - more often than not, he was having to force himself to drag his eyes up from Bucky's mouth, short-circuiting his brain out of wondering whether the boy's lips tasted as salty and briny as his skin smelled; whether they would be rough, chapped from the sea wind, or whether they'd be as soft, as smooth and plump as his lily-pale palms in Steve's...

 _I want to take you away_  
_Away from the crowd_  
_And have you all to myself -_

Steve swallowed hard, finding his eyes having drifted again against his will, resting on the plump Cupid's bow curve of Bucky's upper lip. How many times had he focused on this face, this feature, during the night, sketching it from every angle, memorising and recording every freckle, every curve and nuance and shadow on paper, translating from memory to reality? He slowly looked up, his palms clammy against Bucky's, and the boy was watching him, eyes burning with curiosity. He felt himself leaning closer, uncaring of the cessation of movement between their bodies - simply standing in the centre of the room, listening to the music and waiting for the tension to break, to snap -

 _Alone and apart_  
_Out of a dream_  
_Safe into my heart..._

Bucky closed his eyes, lashes fluttering against his cheekbones, and Steve's hand came up behind the back of his head, cradling the base of his skull as he bit the proverbial bullet and slowly brushed his lips over Bucky's. The boy let out a trembling breath against his mouth, and Steve did it again, pressing their lips together a little no firmly, holding Bucky a little closer against himself, mouth falling open lightly; Bucky let out a sigh like the wind through reeds, and Steve registered very little other than the faint, salty tang of the sea against his lips before his tongue was easing into Bucky's mouth and the boy melted against him with the sweetest, breathiest moan.

It curled through him like smoke, this sweetness, like dripping honey. Hours seemed to pass in those few brief moments of their lips meeting, of Steve's tongue brushing Bucky's, until Steve slowly pulled away and Bucky glanced nervously at him, waiting for Steve's reaction before making any movements of his own.

The human surprised them both (but Bucky especially - _remember the_ don't _'s-_ ) when he took the boy's hand and led him gently to bed, laying him down on the bottom bunk beneath the coves and pulling off his own boots befor curling up behind him. It didn't work so well now that Bucky had grown and filled out his stocky frame, but the way he smiled as he glanced over his shoulder at Steve spoke volumes. Steve tipped his head to the side with gentle fingers on his jaw and gave him him another soft, slow kiss goodnight until Bucky was trembling happily before running his fingers through the boy's hair and lulling him to sleep with the remainder of the Nat King Cole record.


	13. As certain dark things are to be loved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So apparently the first time around, this chapter got deleted/eaten/otherwise removed? Anyway, hopefully things should make sense now!

_Tell her a story_  
_Tell her the honest truth_  
\- Echosmith

 _I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_  
_in secret, between the shadow and the soul._  
\- Pablo Neruda

They woke the next morning still entwined around one another, and Bucky nuzzled his nose against Steve's as his mouth lightly parted and he sighed, wordlessly asking for a kiss; Steve, still half-asleep, rubbed his lips over Bucky's and then cupped his chin to pull him closer, his tongue easing into Bucky's mouth with a gentle moan. They traded lazy sunlit morning kisses there in bed for an hour or so, hands wandering over each other's chests and fingers interlinked as they mouthed at each other, not moving from their spooning position. Neither of them pressed for more; kissing was enough to satisfy. Maybe when you find your soulmate - if you are lucky enough to do so - you will understand. You will look at him or her or them, and know, in your heart, that everything you can do with them will be the greatest thing you have done in your life to that moment; and every moment will stack, one over the other, inside your heart until it is walled with them, and filled with them, and you will feel as though it has grown infinitely with your love for them. That is how Bucky felt kissing Steve; and how Steve felt, holding Bucky in his arms.

Of course, even Sundays - days of rest for many of our small green Earth's population - cannot simply be spent in bed; and so, Bucky and Steve had to get up when the sun was reaching its highest in the weak turn-of-spring sky. Steve laid in bed idly doodling in his pad whilst Bucky headed for the showers. He liked to shower first, mostly because he liked to make sure he got the warm water (Steve often complained good-naturedly about the tail ends of his showers running cold, but it ensured that Bucky would be allowed to nestle his warm body up against Steve's to help raise his temperature back up, so it was a win for both of them, in truth).

Bucky set the shower running and hunted for the soap whilst it warmed up to a decent temperature, eventually finding it nestled behind the tap on the sink, a tiny sliver of slick white, almost small enough that they would be needing another one for when Steve showered after him. Nevertheless, he stripped off his nightclothes (a small tshirt of Steve's, and a pair of too large boxer shorts) and climbed in, closing his eyes and soaping himself up. Being still a young man, and having slept wrapped in the arms of another warm body, he was half-hard; within a few moments, he was at full mast, and he ended up stroking himself until he splashed white over the tiles and his legs - never very steady on the humans' surface, even on the calmest of seas - were shaking harder than ever. He bit his lip and stifled the instinctive gasps of Steve's name. He still wasn't sure whether what they had - nights in each other's arms, and mornings spent pressing warm, dry-mouthed kisses to each other's lips and skin - was enough to allow him to indulge himself that way, and as such, usually kept it quiet. Occasionally a soft groan or a sharp grunt - often when he pressed a knuckle beneath his sac to the spot that made him see stars and made his knees buckle - would escape, but Steve never mentioned it and so neither did he.

When he opened his eyes again and felt steady enough on his legs that he could support himself without holding onto the shower walls for balance, he reached down to pick up the shampoo and clean his hair. Steve was clattering around outside, most likely looking for his enamel tea mug; but the door handle was rattling, the door was swinging open, and Steve was - was staring at him.

He blushed fiery red, worrying that he had been caught making noises he shouldn't've, and covered his groin with his hands purely out of habit. But Steve's gaze was not on his crotch; it had trailed down, over his legs to his feet, and his eyes had grown wider and wider the longer he stared.

Bucky felt his stomach drop.  
  


* * *

  
Steve banged the door shut behind him, head spinning, feeling nauseous. Bucky's legs - there was something - something not right about them, something fishy - he almost laughed, feeling the hysteria bubbling up inside him, because that was exactly the right word. Bucky's legs were a pale, silverish blue, much like his eyes, and patterned with tiny round-edged diamonds; faint, barely visible, but distinctly scale-like, as though he were, as Steve often called him, a little mermaid. His toes - or toe - were webbed, one to the other with a translucent, paper-thin stretch of skin beneath each one, like the joins between the ribs of a fish's tail. It was, above all, a beautiful, ethereal effect - but an incredibly unsettling one. What on earth could have happened in the shower to make his legs go from meaty and pale pink and lightly haired like every other white teenage boy on the planet's, to - to _that_?

Bucky came scrambling out of the bathroom a moment later, visibly panicking. He was white as a sheet, grasping at Steve's hands and babbling nonsensically in that hoarse, guttural language he'd spoken when he was rescued from the water; Steve pulled his hands away, recoiling, too embroiled in his own panic to register the fact that Bucky was trying to explain, trying to calm him down. He could only stammer.

"W-what - what a-are - what the hell, Bucky? What - what the hell is that? What the hell a-are you?"

"I - I am being -" Bucky struggled, gesticulating frustratedly as he tried to find the right words in his still limited English vocabulary to explain himself. "- Being fish? Fish person? I don't - I am not knowing how to - to 'splain Iself better - I am being, a fish man."

"A fisherman?" Steve asked, staring at him with mounting horror. Bucky wasn't - a fish man? What the fuck was that supposed to mean? He wanted to take Bucky by the shoulders and shake him - shake it out of him, like he did in the med bay, but if the words weren't there for him to use, there was no way he'd be able to articulate himself enough for Steve to understand. He was staring at Bucky in confusion, which seemed to be making the poor boy's flummoxed state worse. He could see the tears welling up in his eyes, fear and frustration and desperation building up behind his frantic gaze, trying to make Steve understand, trying to reassure him that it was evidently nothing (he had _fish_ legs) to worry about ( _fish legs_!) - trying to charade it, with fluttering hands and arms entwined (fucking _FISH LEGS_!)

Bucky grabbed the drawing pad, sensing Steve's panic rising higher and higher. Of course he was going to fuck up at some point - of course he was going to show himself, going to make everything worse - how was he supposed to hide this from Steve once they were off the boat? Eventually Steve would want to do something like shower or bathe together - he would see the scales, the finned feet, he would know - he would know that Bucky was some kind of half-human freak - a monstrosity, an abomination - a disgusting creature not worth anything from him - and Bucky would fracture, would turn to foam on the sea, would fade away to fish bones and a broken heart, because he would never (could never) stop loving Steve -

Flipping desperately through the pages to find a clean one, so that he could try and draw what he meant, he stopped at a flash of a tail and sparkling silver scales. He opened the sketchpad fully at that page and gasped softly, eyes tracing every line of the drawing.

He himself had been rendered, with the utmost love, as a merman. His hair was splayed out behind him as though caught halfway through a turn of his head in the water, fronds of it whipping across his face, his eyes open and full of stormy seas and constellations as he stared back off the paper. His body was perfectly drawn, accurate (as far as he could tell) with lightly-muscled arms and a strong chest which tapered to narrow hips - and then a tail. Glistening, shimmering, catching and refracting imaginary light as the large fin at the end waved lazily in the current - it was as though Steve had taken a photograph (another human word he'd recently learnt, meaning a picture on a piece of paper which captured the exact moment it was taken, without the need of someone like Steve having to draw it) from his life before Steve himself, and had transposed it onto paper with his pencil. He was enraptured.

Turning the pad around slowly, tracing the tail with his finger - the detail Steve had gone to was incredible; he should've been drawing for a living, never slaving away onboard a Navy ship like he was - and looked up into Steve's wide, disbelieving eyes.

"Fish man," he murmured, and Steve visibly gulped.  
  


* * *

  
A _merman_. A fucking _merman_. Steve was going crazy; all of this was a dream; that's the only way to explain it. A fucked-up, crazy fever dream. He'd come down with something, and would wake up in med bay with Margie and Dr Erskine and a normal, human Bucky all leaning over him, the two medical staff checking his pulse and temperature or something and Bucky just smiling in that way that means he can't wait to be allowed to kiss Steve again (rules: Bucky can't hold Steve's hand around other people; Bucky can't kiss Steve around other people; Bucky can't give Steve that look around other people; Bucky basically isn't allowed to be in love with Steve around other people). He blinked hard, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head before opening them again. Nope. Bucky - fucking freak merman Bucky - was still standing in front of him holding out that pad, gazing at it with something like wonder in his eyes.

Steve felt like he was going to throw up.

Because even though it changed everything, it changed nothing at all. Bucky had always fascinated and terrified him, for how much he longed to know everything about the boy - even in the Biblical sense - and this was a whole new layer of confusion and exoticism and mystery wrapped around him, another layer to be peeled back and understood. He felt horrendously guilty for treating Bucky like a science experiment sometimes - kissing him, running his hands over his eager, trembling body, to see what it would make him do - whether he would sob and arch against him the way Steve pictured him doing sometimes, in the fantasies where they progressed beyond kissing to murky, shadowy acts that had Bucky gasping and sobbing his name like a Sunday litany; whether he would squirm away, ticklish, and laugh; or whether he would touch back, equally curious, wanting to learn all about Steve, too.

He knew Bucky loved him; and - Christ and all his flaming-sword-bearing angels - Steve loved Bucky, somehow. The boy had worked his way under Steve's skin, with his curious mercurial eyes and his gentle hands and his inquisitive, painfully sweet nature. Always eager to please, desperate to do anything that would cause Steve to praise him; fishing for compliments, acquiescing to and begging for more morning kisses, wrapping his leg around Steve's waist to prevent him from getting up until Bucky had had his fill of Steve's skin against his, of the slow rub and slide of their lips. And of course he never did get enough. Neither could Steve. They were addicts, the pair of them; craving the slow, sticky sweet pleasure creeping through their veins, the warmth that washed over each of them when they cradled the other in their arms, the rising tides of need that grew the longer and further they were apart.

At the end of the day, Bucky would rush to the cabin to see Steve; would practically hurl himself onto the bed and demand to be wrapped in Steve's arms, curling his own around Steve's neck and tilting his head back for Steve to plant lines of soft kisses down his neck. He'd sigh and groan, occasionally rock his hips against Steve's thigh - but they never went further than that. Bucky seemed to understand that with them, it was something different; something to be taken slowly, never rushed, until they could make love; Bucky could never be just a fuck for Steve, and Steve wasn't sure Bucky had ever known how to be physically close to somebody without the tangle of emotions and need between them.

Steve was going to throw up. He threw the cabin door open - abandoning Bucky there, in the middle of the floor - and locked the door before making a break for the main deck.


	14. You Belong In The Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has learned the truth and... deals with it less than well, to be honest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh I've fucking had enough of glaring at this chapter in the attempt to force it to work, and so here it is and don't shoot for how crap it is, I really do know.

_Your hair was mermaid blue_  
_And your skin was perfect_  
_You taught us about love_  
_When the two of you met_  
\- Kate Nash

Dugan's whiskey was sour, burning his throat as he gulped it down like water, trying to wash away the images of Bucky with - with a fish's tail out of his mind. His stomach heaved, nothing but alcohol swilling around inside him. The nausea stemming from those horrendous mental images only made things worse. Steve swallowed against it, trying to force himself not to vomit everywhere as his stomach was threatening to make him do. Dugan laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, concern in his usually bluff eyes; Steve was far below himself in weight and stature, and as such was steaming drunk on a measure that would only have Dugan slightly tipsy.

Steve shivered. He was cold, confused, and feeling more than a little sick from the shock of Bucky's revelation and from the alcohol swilling around in his raw stomach. Falsworth was plying him with large glasses of water, trying to dilute the whiskey to prevent the inevitable hangover tomorrow; Steve drank obediently, but had to stop frequently when the glugging of the liquid hitting his tender stomach made it roil and heave. He'd never held his alcohol well. No doubt getting up tomorrow morning with his head feeling as though someone were putting him through a meat grinder would remind him why he never usually drank like this, but until then, he needed to wash the thoughts of Bucky and his - his abnormalities - out of his head. With as much whiskey as possible.

Who had given Bucky the right to fall in love with Steve and make all of this so complicated? How was he supposed to deal with this now - how was he supposed to be okay with a boy who depended on him for literally everything turning around and telling him that he wasn't what Steve thought, that he wasn't even human? Steve felt anger burn through him, whiskey-fuelled and, he realised, completely unfair. He knew Bucky - knew the trusting, open expression in his deep blue-grey eyes, the love that shone out of them like starlight. Or he thought he had known him. Until Bucky had lied to him, for months by omission. And worse, he'd fallen in love with Steve and taken Steve's heart in return, not entirely with Steve's consent.

What was he supposed to do with a boy who was infatuated with him? He'd tried pushing Bucky away - refusing to share beds any more, setting down ground rules about touches and kisses and the look in the kid's eyes (not that Bucky could particularly stop the last part) - and he'd tried giving him what he wanted in the attempt to satisfy him enough to allow Steve to pull back again. He'd made a mistake. All Bucky wanted now was to sit in Steve's lap on their bed and smother him in eager, trembling kisses, hot mouth against the side of Steve's throat and his small, lithe hands stroking Steve's body. His kisses were drugging, by turns loving and forlorn, as if he needed to press them all to Steve's skin before the world ended or the tide turned and swallowed the ship. And Steve had turned from pushing him away uncomfortably to rewarding his little shows of devotion with his own kisses, over Bucky's pulse points and collarbones and the fine, elegant arch of his spine, brushing his lips over every vertebrae through Bucky's pale, luminous skin every milk-lit morning.

Bucky was always so afraid, still. Would cling to Steve's hands and offer in his strange, softly-spoken voice every pleasure in the world if Steve would only stay in the cabin with him, instead of taking him out on deck. If he noticed any of the other seamen's eyes on him whilst prepping meals in the galley, he would flinch as though burned, and move to where he was out of sight. People seemed to frighten him; every person, except Steve (and, to a far lesser extent, the chef O'Toole).

Steve's heart fluttered. His head throbbed dully, the cabin around him loosely spinning like a globe on a wobbly axis. Bucky. He couldn't leave him, of course not. The world Bucky found himself in now terrified him; Steve could see it in every nervous flickering glance of those quicksilver eyes, every face a threat, every bodily movement an attack. Bucky flinched away from human contact as though expecting pain or punishment every time. Again, Steve was the exception. Steve with his too-gentle hands and his soft words and his lips irresistibly drawn to Bucky's cherry-red mouth and acres of smooth pearl skin. Steve had fallen as heavily, as headily in love with Bucky as the kid had with him, both of them lost causes. But he couldn't - Bucky wasn't normal, wasn't acceptable, wasn't someone Steve could ever be allowed to love publicly.

Theirs was a love for behind closed doors, where nobody could see, where the only ones to know were them. And that is the greatest, truest kind of love. If something can survive, a tiny flame behind a cupped hand on a windy day, when rain spits to put the sparks out and the wind breathes hard to extinguish the flames - if that tiny fire stays alight, it will last for centuries.  
  


* * *

  
Bucky was frantic with fear, shame sending tears rolling down his flushed cheeks. Of course Steve would run away - would think him a freak. Bucky had never been more raw than he was now, whole heart and body on the line - _they're murderers, Buchanan, they killed your mother!_ \- to a human he had allowed himself to fall in love with, a stone dropped into the ocean; perhaps this was the feeling of it landing on the sea floor, nowhere further to go, and the pearl inside the oyster shell was just a grain of sand after all. He waited on Steve's bunk for hours for the human to return, but the night continued to seep away into primrose and lavender dawn, and there was no sign of Steve's golden head nor sound of his light footfalls outside the portholes or through the heavy gangway doors.

He waited for hours upon hours upon hours.

Duty began at 0800; Bucky did not attend the galley, and nobody came to fetch him. He simply sat on Steve's bunk, sketchpad in hand, gazing out of the porthole beside the bunk. Remembering his cell beneath his father's coral palace, watching the bloody human sun rise over the waves and filter red-rose light through the depths to his face, kissing his skin and glowing in his eyes. Remembering his thoughts of Steve and his rescue, remembering his fear seeing the human sinking towards him before realising how kind, how beautiful he looked - how gentle and clever his hands were, how soft and inviting his mouth...

He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, blinking hard to force away the tears. Steve would return eventually, for his things if nothing else. But this was bound to be it; this would be the moment Steve's worst promise came true, that they would be separated, and Bucky would have to live at the opposite end of the boat, never seeing Steve but from the other side of the serving grille at mealtimes. If, by some miracle, that didn't end up happening, he would have to be good, to show his gratitude. He would have to keep himself well in hand; have to stop himself from instinctively reaching for Steve's hand whenever they were together, stop his lips from seeking out Steve's jaw and that spot beneath his ear that made him make that husky gasp that sent sparks of pride and pleasure fizzling through Bucky's body, would have to think before he spoke and acted and looked and listened to Steve. He would have to become a new person - an alternate Bucky, someone who was not in love with Steve and never had been. But it would be worth it, to be able to sleep near him sometimes, to lull himself into slumber with soft snores and the whistling of weak human lungs.

The door opened just as the sun was setting, and Bucky whirled around to see Steve silhouetted, tiny, against the doorframe. He swallowed hard, already trying to launch into apologies that refused to translate themselves on his tongue. He couldn't even remember the human word for 'Sorry', and settled for reaching for Steve to say it with his hands and heart before realising that, as per his own rules, touching was out of bounds. He settled miserably against the bunk, feeling powerless.

"Bucky... you're... you're..." Steve trailed away, running a hand through his hair in vexation. He could barely concentrate on what he was supposed to be asking, with tear-glazed stormy eyes gazing up at him with such complete adoration and abject misery. He'd done something unforgiveable to Bucky in walking out last night, and this was the sole chance he had to make it better in his own mind. Of course Bucky would give him chance after chance, because he was young and naive and stupid with love, and didn't realise that Steve was not even remotely worth such a patient, beautiful being - but that was one gift horse Steve wouldn't look in the mouth.

"Yes," Bucky lilted, understanding wordlessly exactly what Steve means. "I'm sorry."

"I don't - understand. Why are you here? Why have you got - legs?" He glanced awkwardly at Bucky's feet, pale, toes wriggling against the hard floors. "I - surely you're supposed to be under the water, not above it?"

"I... did bad things," Bucky answered hesitantly. "Disobeyed my father... came to the surface. We are not being supposed to seeing humans, they are - dangerous, we is being told. My mother was murdered by humans, in a netting for fishes." He swallowed hard. "I do not remember, but... my father, he is having a long memory, and he is being very angry for me for going to the surface to save you."

"You saved me?"

"Yes. I to be taken you to the..." He searched for the human word, frowning and gesticulating, "...with all the boats? The walls where boats are tied?"

"Docks?"

"Yes, the docks, and I am knocking on the bottom of a boat, and someone is reaching out with a netting and pulling you in, and I am watching to make sure you are alright. And you are, so... I go home, and I am punished, until I run away and you are finding me and taking me onto your boat." He swallowed hard, glancing up at Steve through thick, wet dark eyelashes.

Steve's head reeled, not just from the still-lingering hangover. It was Bucky who brought him to Peggy and Daniel from the storm; Bucky who saved him from the water that first time, who saved his life. Bucky who had brought him out of the waves to taste oysters and draw angels dancing and taste the starlight on a merman's lips, and Steve has been a perfect idiot the whole time. Saving someone from death creates a bond, a golden thread linking soul to soul, tying loves and lives together for forever after forever until the end of the gods' great whirling bowls of space and time. Bucky was tied to Steve, and Steve to Bucky. It was written in that golden thread that they would fall in love, and of course it was true.

"But... but why did you stay? This isn't your home, is it? You belong in the sea," he mumbled helplessly, heart aching for reasons he couldn't and didn't want to name.

"I... to hoping I was belonging with you," Bucky whispered, voice cracking.

"No, I can't - I can't keep you here. You won't be happy. You belong in the sea," Steve insisted. He felt the tug of the thread between them, Bucky's expression poleaxed, pain seeping in through the cracks in those silver eyes, slowly assuming the worst.

"I am... being yours." Bucky pleaded, reaching for Steve's hands. The blond had to force himself to pull his hands away, his heart aching with the need to say, _Yes, you are mine and I yours, til the end of the line._

"No," he said, and this time, Bucky was silent.


	15. Dream of Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A promise is made that will _really_ get the ball rolling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is weak. I know it. But I can't stand to look at it any more, let alone try and edit it.

_Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens_  
_in the resonant and dying evening!_  
\- Pablo Neruda

He dreamed that night of his father's kingdom.

The sea was warm, familiar and welcoming as he dived down beneath the waves towards home. It left his skin salt-kissed, his hair wafting in the gentle currents; he closed his eyes and spread-eagled himself in the water, allowing himself to sink slowly to the bottom, tail waving lazily. The sea has always been his home, and there, in the distance, was his father's palace.The castle walls glittered in the trickling light, coral blood-red and twisting in fantastic whorls and shapes as it stretched spindly fingers towards the ocean surface, trying to break the waves. He swam through the gates, where the guards greeted him like an old friend and ushered him to the Prince's Garden; he said hello to every frond of every sunflower, feeling their red velvet petals brush his skin like so many lovers' kisses.

Their touch burned, like pressing his fingers to the human sun, so far above him, an egg yolk in an upturned bowl. He pulled his hand back, confused, before hearing laughter behind him - laughter he would recognise blind and deaf. _Steve_.

Steve was stood beneath the weeping willow tree, admiring its long, slender branches and playfully hiding behind the curtains of fronds, peeking out between them to grin mischievously at Bucky before disappearing again. He was running, on human feet; running, breathing and living underwater, as though born there. Of course it was a dream, but Bucky couldn't help seeing it as a portent; that he and Steve - despite the literal ocean between them - had met, and survived, and fallen in love. And maybe it would last.

He smiled and chased the sound of Steve's laughter; it burst around him like fireworks, like molten sunlight, and he felt it on his skin and in his mouth, bright as lemons. Steve would flash in and out of the trees, darting around their trunks, always a step ahead, always a heartbeat faster than Bucky would be able to catch him. But it was a game; they both knew that Steve was running for the pleasure of the chase, not for any desire to get away. On the contrary, he was hoping to be caught. Until then, the game would continue.

Steve eventually paused when he was standing again beneath the willow tree, smiling at Bucky with starlight eyes and flushed cheeks. He approached cautiously, not wanting Steve to run; he reached out his arms; and as he grasped Steve's hands to pull him into a kiss, the human let out a gasp and a stream of bubbles and he was suddenly fighting against Bucky, kicking, straining for the surface. His eyes were blown with panic as Bucky tried to help, tried to let go, tried to hold on and drag him up to the air, but his hands - locked tight around Steve's wrists, out of his control - would not release him, and he himself was immobilised, stuck on the sea floor like lead, slowly drowning his own lover. Bucky tried to scream, but all that came out were bubbles. Tried to reassure Steve, but all he could say was in Mermish, and seemed to frighten Steve even more.

Eventually, Steve's eyes drifted closed, his head lolled, and his body went slack where Bucky's hands were wrapped around his wrists like vices. He released him just as the last tiny bubble escaped Steve's lips, and from then on, no shaking or pounding on his breakable human chest or oxygen breathed into his lungs would open his eyes. Bucky held Steve to him and ran his hands through the golden hair, weeping; sitting on the rock and singing, old Mermish grieving songs, that made sailors leap off their boats and into the water. His father had always told him that humans were murderers; he never forgot, however, that the mermaids were not innocent either.

Bucky awoke screaming, tears rolling down his face, to Steve's concerned face hovering over him and his soft, deep voice - husky with sleep - reassuring him that everything was okay, that they were safe. Bucky hated himself for it - _hated_  himself - but he couldn't stop his hands from seizing Steve's head and dragging him in for a frantic kiss, wrapping his arms around him as though he'd never let go and hanging on for dear life. And Steve seemed to understand, because he didn't fight it - didn't do anything, in fact, but rub Bucky's back with gentle hands and whisper soothing platitudes into the boy's ear, rocking him gently.

Bucky felt like a child being soothed to sleep, but it worked. Steve's closeness, his scent of warm spices and moonlight and human, settled in his core, a weight that kept him anchored and buoyed at the same time. Loving Steve was an unbearable lightness of being; floating so high he was afraid the tethers would snap and he would fly away, further and further, until he would never be able to come back. But tonight, he welcomed that lightness; welcomed the way it counteracted his fear of being too heavy, of anchoring Steve down to die. He had to let go. He understood that.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into Steve's shoulder. "I was behaved childishly, earlier. I am understand that we are not to being... together."

"It's alright," Steve murmured. "Love often makes people behave childishly. Like getting mad at someone for something they can't help. I'm sorry too, Bucky, because I shouldn't have said what I did to you and about you."

"It's okay," Bucky said softly, and Steve's heart ached. Bucky, he knew, would give Steve the whole world if he asked. He had forgiven Steve already, because he loved him and because holding a grudge wasn't in his nature and never had been. Steve was the one who felt the need to prove something, to hold the boy at arm's length to prevent himself from getting into complicated situations like the current one. But Bucky had always thrown himself heart-first into Steve; risking everything for a man he didn't know and had been raised to hate and fear. Steve didn't _deserve_ Bucky, when it came down to it. Pure and simple.

"No, Bucky, it's not. I hurt you."

"No, I am being hurt me," Bucky argued. It was his fault for falling in love with Steve in the first place. Every heartbreak he had since weathered could be traced back to that fact. "Is my fault." He sighed. "It is not to mattering anyway. We are not being allowed to bring humans back to home."

Steve sighed minutely against the crown of his head, kissing his hair with tender lips. His heartbeat thudded beneath Bucky's palm as he stroked his hair for several moments, clearly deliberating. Bucky chanced a glance upwards and saw Steve staring out of the porthole, a faraway expression in his blue eyes.

"What is it like, your home?" He turned his head back to Bucky, curious. He didn't let go.

"It is... magnificent." Bucky answered. "A shame you will never to be seeing it. My father is ruling as King, and my mother is Queen with my sisters. They are not looking much like me, with my mother's golden eyes and different hair. I am to missing them," he said, voice cracking, and Steve huddled a little closer, laying Bucky's head on his shoulder.

"Tell me about them. About home. I want to know all about where you come from." Perhaps then some of the mystery will be solved.

"All of it?"

"Yep." Steve nodded, eyes warm on Bucky's face.

"I am growing up in a castle with walls made from red sea-stone like flutes - hollow and having open ends, which we are having to tile with scales and silver shells because otherwise there would be cold. Your fires are very strange to me," he confesses, "because ours are being green and blue, in the flames, and yours are burning orange and yellow, and much hotter. But human fires are being put out with water, and ours are burning even below the sea, so perhaps this is why ours are being cooler. But there is a fire in every room, in fireplaces made from pieces of old human ships and blocks of stone.

"My home has a huge hall in the middle, where I am supposed to be taking my lessons every day, but I am to be swimming away instead to explore, or to lie in my garden where it is beautiful. I have many flowers, but my favourites are bright red, shaped like the sun, and their petals unfurl in the mornings and close at night when the sun kisses them goodnight and the moon rises to turn the sea black. It is much lighter up here, so close to the sun and the moon; I can seeing much better, but it is hurting my eyes often because of so bright.

"I am to be missing my sisters. They are being very beautiful, and I'm being sure that they would like you. But my father is to be saying 'No humans can be taken to the merfolk kingdom!'-" _they're murderers, Buchanan_ \- "because humans killed my mother when I was being very young. I am not to be remembering her, and the Queen is being my real mother, I suppose... Is it terrible that I don't missing my mother?"

"Your... your first mother?"

"Yes," Bucky replies, eyes serious, silver and steady on Steve's face. Steve shakes his head no.

"You barely knew her, from the sounds of it."

"I am not even knowing what she looks like. Father is saying I am having her eyes, and her curiosity - he doesn't liking that - but I don't knowing. I can't knowing."

"I never knew my dad, actually. He was killed in a war before I was born - he was gassed in the trenches. I don't really miss him either, other than that I know Mom always missed him and that made me sad that he wasn't there. Because I can't solve that problem, can I? She was always a ray of sunshine, my mom, but there were some things that she couldn't shake and Dad was one of them." Steve sighed.

"I understand. I am feeling the same about my mother. My father is missing her very badly, even with the Queen and my sisters, and I feel upset that she is gone and it is making him sad, but... I am not being missing of her." He spent a minute in memories. His father, looking at him like seeing a ghost - the ghost of his dead wife behind Buchanan's eyes, perhaps, or hearing her laugh in his son's voice. The thought made him miss his father even more fiercely, and guilt settled, heavy as a millstone, in his stomach. His father had lost first a wife to the humans, and now, a son. What was that human saying? _History always repeats itself._

" _I don't miss her_ ," Steve corrected gently. "I get it. You can't miss what you've never had."

"Exactly," Bucky agreed, and nuzzled Steve's neck. "Thank you for sitting with me. I am feeling much better now."

"Good." He hesitated for a moment before gazing at Bucky with hopeful, soft blue eyes. "I do wish I could see it, though. Your home."

"I..." He wanted to say that it would be no problem, and that Steve would be welcomed as the lover of the erstwhile Prince and heir to the throne. He wanted to, but... the merfolk are not predisposed to telling lies; a mostly human invention, as we are always getting ourselves into troubles that we need to get out of. They are a fundamentally honest people, with codes of truth and honour like the chivalrous knights of old. Buchanan could not afford to risk his father's wrath again for breaking the law; an outlaw already, returning to the kingdom would mean imprisonment for him and worse for Steve - if he survived the long journey down. The bottom of the sea was miles and miles below them, sinking through the point where the water turned black before bursting into the diamond-clear light and vibrance of the merkingdom. Buchanan knew all of this; but he had a burning curiosity beyond many merfolk's, and his heart - already soft - was enthralled to Steve. His human had only to ask something of him, and Buchanan would move heaven and earth to give it to him, whether it be a kiss or the stars themselves.

"I... I will take you."


	16. Planets and Satellites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is where things start to pick up. It's all going down now. Hang onto your hats, folks!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, unbetaed because I'm useless and lazy. Any mistakes/typos my own, with my apologies.

_Dead Sea  
Told me I was like the Dead Sea_   
_Never sink when you are with me_

_In the end it all boils down to credibility_  
 _I had none, so I will die with the secrets of the sea_  
\- the Lumineers

The _Miantonomah_ docked at Bayonne the next morning in preparation for her stint as part of the Allied forces in Europe. She needed fuel, food and supplies for the crew, and a spate of repairs before she would be really ready, however, so Captain Phillips gave the crew two days' shore leave before they would set sail from Gravesend Bay. Bucky was fast asleep in bed when Steve came to share the good news.

He was allowed another couple of minutes of blissfully ignorant rest before Steve shook him gently awake, face splitting on a smile, eyes sparkling. He blinked sleepily at him and smiled, sleep-ruffled and happy to see him; Steve was fidgeting, barely able to stand still as he told him, "We've got shore leave for the next two days - Buck, you can take me tonight and then we'll come back tomorrow! Talk about timing - it's perfect, God bless Captain Phillips and the British-"

Bucky's stomach swooped unpleasantly. Two days of freedom during which he would have to do his best to dissuade Steve from being taken to see the sparkling haven of Bucky's childhood, with its glinting roof shell-tiles and shining amber windows, tree fronds waving in the current and with the glow of a hundred green-and-blue driftwood fires burning inside the cavernous rooms. He was torn, of course - he could feel something awful looming on the horizon, bubbling under his feet like the fire beneath a cauldron. O'Toole told him that that was the way to cook a frog; put it in cool water, and then slowly turn up the heat so that by the time it realised it was being cooked, it would be dead. But it was probably only the dream from last night lingering in his mind, hanging over his head and making him see daggers in every shadow. Steve was fine. He was fine. And they didn't have to actually enter the castle - they could always hide out in the crevasse near the Water Witch's rumoured cave and watch the palace's comings and goings from afar.

The sun was egg-yolk yellow in the sky, beams thick and golden as butter on Steve's hair as they carefully sailed out a short way from the dock. Steve was visibly excited, so much so that he could barely sit still and stop fidgeting long enough to help Bucky run the sailboat out to their diving spot. The sea was as smooth as glass beneath them, barely a ripple for every wave, but Bucky's stomach felt full of whirlpools, sucking his heart down into their gaping maws; everything could go wrong on this little trip, and it undoubtedly would. What if Steve fell in, and Bucky had to save him again? What if they tried to swim down there, and Steve ran out of air and drowned? What if they actually managed to get to the kingdom, and the guards saw them and arrested Bucky and killed Steve (as he knew damn well their orders were)? So many what ifs... It wasn't worth it in the least.

But seeing that sun-splitting smile on Steve's face, cheeks apple red in the wind and voice bright as he bombarded Bucky with more questions about what everything was like down there, whether he could meet Bucky's friends if not his parents (he would love Steve to meet his friends, if he actually had any outside of the gardeners, who would definitely rat to his father if he took Steve to meet them), made it impossible to do the right thing. He wanted to show Steve all of his favourite places. To take him to the Prince's Garden and share with him his treasures, the wonders of his old world; his statue, with its coy smile and soft eyes so like Steve's own; his bedroom, swathed in more stretches of human silks and satins, reds and purples and oranges, wonderful, warm hues that glowed against the cold water and walls. He wanted so much.

But he was torn between two worlds. Like a fallen star, Bucky could never truly return home; but neither did he really belong in the world he currently found himself. Too bright, too brilliant to be human; too lost and foreign, now, to be mer. Luckily, Steve was as much an outsider as he. Perhaps that had been what drew them together, beyond the life-saving and warm bodies pressed together in bed and the kind words. That sense of kinship in each other's eyes. A love like a supernova, burning so bright it obliterated everything else in its path but the other person, the two of them a pair of clashing stars. He watched the stars, sometimes, from the portholes, and wondered if he had - in the reverse of them - somehow fallen up, from the ethereal to the terrestrial, the bowl of the sea to the flat of the land.

Steve took to the water first, with a surprised shout - the water colder than he had been expecting - before laughing and holding out one arm to encourage Bucky in after him. He treaded water whilst Bucky shrugged off the thick Navy-issue woollen sweater and plunged in after him, the water a cold burst of pins and needles around him before his head broke the surface and he grinned at Steve.

Steve beamed at him, and Bucky took his hand to lead the way.

The tug behind his navel - jerking him under the water, spluttering and kicking - was instantaneous.

* * *

The cloudy water hid most of what was happening from Steve's view, but Bucky's hand had tightened, bone-crushingly painful, around his wrist, and he seemed to have forgotten how to swim. His legs had stopped moving, locked into a helpless, limp line - Steve understood that panic can manifest itself in strange ways in people sometimes, but his lungs were bursting as he tried to wriggle his hand free of Bucky's.

Failing that, he torpedoed his body and kicked as hard as he could for the surface, feeling the tug-of-war between gravity acting on Bucky and his own upward exertions to reach the air again making him quickly grow exhausted. Behind him, Bucky was clawing uselessly at his legs with one hand; Steve couldn't see what he was trying to remove - perhaps he was hallucinating - but he kicked harder, painfully aware that his lungs were quickly using up all the air he had and soon he would have to either let go (if Bucky allowed him to) to breathe, or to drown.

He glanced around him in a panic, trying to see what Bucky's hands were trying to scrape away from his immobile legs. There was nothing but water surrounding the delicate feet in their issue boots, but Bucky was screaming and coughing and fighting against some invisible restraint like a wildcat, desperate to be set free. Steve remembered, strangely, the story of Bucky's mother; trying to rescue her son from a human's net full of fish, she had become entangled and killed, although the boy - Bucky - had made a lucky escape when the net was released above the water. His mother had fallen, sunk down to her husband, and the crying Bucky with her.

Bucky might be considered, if Steve ever did put stock on these kinds of things, a bad omen at sea. Every sailor had heard about the craft and bloodthirst of mermaids: singing to entice the men close, and then turning on them and consuming their flesh. Humans like to tell horror stories about what they don't understand, he knew - and it was obvious, having encountered Bucky and his all-consuming fear of every human bar Steve himself, that the merfolk (of which, according to Bucky, there were many) were just as wary of humans. More so. As something more than human, they were beautiful, exotic, unique - and crying out for a black market trade in their parts and pieces, as some unsavoury individuals would be bound to realise upon encountering them.

But Bucky had enticed Steve in with nothing more than his charming naïveté, his unquenchable thirst for the human experience - and his heart. Wholly Steve's, from the moment Bucky had laid eyes on him. The greatest prize for any huntsman. But the most dangerous, also, because now - now that Steve knew, and saw, and loved Bucky, he had to keep that heart safe and beating. The universe had narrowed to the twin stars of the boy's eyes, the pivotal points of Steve's being; dragged inescapably and willingly towards him, always revolving around each other, two planets locked in their dance; two satellites, in constant orbit. One for the other, always.

His legs kicked weakly, fighting the inevitable sinking. His lungs were screaming, burning - more and more air leaking out from between his lips in streams of bubbles as he struggled against Bucky, his panicked face reflected in huge blue-grey eyes. His movements were growing sluggish as he began to tire; within moments, he was fighting the drowsy dying loll of his head against his chest, eyes closing and bubbled breaths no longer being clung to like pearls. Bucky was already limp, a heavy weight dragging him down as they sank beneath the waves, and Steve watched the surface and its brilliant golden light fade and filter away.


	17. For If A Ship Sinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky wakes up to a sleeping Steve, and is forced to decide what he values most in all the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed, all mistakes mine, yadda yadda. You guys know the drill.

_Besides, they would never see the beauty of the world below them, for if a ship sinks, the seamen drown_  
\- Hans Christian Andersen

 _Oh, if I could go back in time_  
_When you only held me in my mind_  
_Just a longing, born without a trace_  
_Oh, I wish I'd never, ever seen your face_  
_I wish you were the one_  
_Wish you were the one that got away_  
-The Civil Wars

The sea ebbed and flowed above them for hours, the two trapped boys at the bottom of the ocean, still clinging to one another's hands like human children in nursery school. After the human sun had set and risen twice, the stars holding a quiet vigil over the two of them laying side by side beneath the seaweed and the ribboned fronds of anemones, movement stirred one limp body. Bucky was the first to open his eyes, slowly blinking wakefulness through the fog in his head to register the warm, solid grip of Steve's hand in his and to see him, sleeping peacefully, beside him. _Sleeping... under the water?_

He tried to sit upright, panic surging through him, but was stopped by a lilting, singing Mermish tongue speaking his name, and the familiar sensation of those semi-invisible, brackish black hands, impossibly strong, binding him to the floor. His mother stood over him, golden hair rippling in the currents, with sad eyes, extending her hand to him gently. His father's trident, green-bronze and deadly sharp, seemed to be being held to his chest by the water's sheer force of will; for everyone knows that it is the water Pelegios controls, not the trident itself.

"Mother," he gasped, reaching for her, but she melted away like sea foam and instead, in her place, stood the Water Witch, with familiar greenish-yellow eyes like embers and strong, vicious hands. He recoiled against the sand, groping for Steve's hand, frantic. He knew the rumours about the Witch; every merchild did. How she skewered and ate misbehaving merchildren like humans did prawns at a beach barbeque; how she would bewitch them with spells and potions to entice them away from their mamas, to turn them into polyps and anemones and hideous, guttering spiny creatures for her poisons. She was as much a danger, they were always taught, as the humans.

"I know, darling," she croaked, in her low voice. "It can be so confusing to be lied to, can't it? But don't worry, I'm here to help."

"You don't help anyone," Buchanan mumbled, still trying to sink into the sea floor away from the spines of the trident, those hands, and her hideous, wild eyes like phosphorus. There was a strange popping noise from beside him and he immediately looked to Steve, terrified that she had somehow harmed him whilst Bucky's attention had been on her; but instead, he was greeted with the sight of Steve's chest rising and falling, pink lips parted as he breathed in and out of a bubble, shimmering silver, that blew around his head like spun sugar.

"Of course I do. I helped your father. I gave him a son. What he's always wanted... his poor, sweet wife, and the boy too - what a tragedy. You were always the apple of your parents' eye, Buchanan." She smiled at him, a terrible smile full of teeth like pins, a shark's gruesome smile careening out of the dark to swallow you whole. Never tangle with witches, children: only evil can come of it. You can tell a witch by her smile, and her glowing eyes. Inhuman, like a wolf, a beast of prey. You must run, and run fast, as though the Devil himself were after you.

Buchanan could not run. He could barely think. His head was spinning, full of flashes of foggy memories he had the faintest inkling belonged to him, but were viewed through a haze of ripples with the sound turned down, as though viewed underwater. A girl, with his blue eyes and longer, braided dark hair, snapping at him as he looked up at her from beside her feet. A kind-faced woman with a rounded jaw and cheeks like apples, holding him to her chest and rubbing his back as his nose nuzzled into her shoulder and took a deep breath, smelling violets and talcum powder. Hearing the same woman calling someone else's name - encouraging him to walk on short, chubby, unsteady legs across the polished boards of a houseboat - being swung up into the arms of a strong, handsome man with his sharp jawline and a booming laugh like thunder, making him kick his pudgy legs and giggle. Sinking below a veil of blue, a golden glow grasped tight in one small fist, watching the red sun disappear from over him, burning his small eyes with the last sight of being human.

Dancing beneath the waves with his father, swimming in the Prince's Garden, seeing those red shapes - petals, of human flowers - floating far above on the surface, as though intended for him.

Every memory swam with the name _James_ in his ears, the rushing of the tide; things he could never have remembered, never have imagined to know that they were false. He reeled, vision blackening at the edges, feeling more airless even than when he had almost drowned until Steve's hands pulled him out of the water like an angel of mercy.

"My father-"

"Is not Pelegios, James. Your father is human... weak, and cruel. A murderer. Perhaps the man that dragged the Queen out of the water. I'm sure that must hurt. Knowing that you've been like your precious human all the time... One of them. The creatures your father hates most... the creatures that killed his wife and son. Your hands are bloody, same as his." She glanced at Steve, and Bucky made a violent thrashing movement, trying to cover him from her eyes. Steve was not to be touched, not to be damaged and tainted and ruined by her games and intrigues, not whilst there was still breath in his body. So many times Bucky had risked everything he knew and held dear for Steve; he would risk them all again, a thousand times more, in the blink of an eye if ever he had to.

The Water Witch laughed. "Such vim and vigour! No wonder Pelegios was convinced you were his. You're as stubborn and bullheaded as the old man himself, aren't you? Now tell me, little prince," she hissed his title like poison, smile widening like the maw of a fishing net swooping down to catch unsuspecting tuna, and he was caught, helplessly ensnared. "Wouldn't you like to know about all the lies your precious father has taught you?"

"My father would never lie to me," Bucky spat back, struggling against the smoky hands still holding him to the ocean floor, back stinging from the abrasive sand. The Witch leaned slightly to put her weight more behind the trident, and he gasped and bit his lip to hold back further cries as the points dug through his chest, scraping over his ribs with a sound like nails on a chalkboard (an expression Steve had taught him). The pain was insurmountable; like fire in his veins, it radiated from his chest to the tips of his toes, and when his eyes stopped rolling in agony, he looked down and saw a tail, his tail, his beautiful, glittering merman's tail with scales of silver and cerulean and bronze all flashing beneath the waves in the light of the lanternfishes.

"I know, little prince. He loves you very much. He was distraught when you left," she said, her voice heavy and leaden with misery. "He didn't understand why you would choose a monster - a human - over all the kingdom. Don't you want to be king? Don't you want to live and rule over the palace and all the foam-topped seas, like your father? Don't you want to see him and your sisters? The whole ocean is in mourning; the king believed you dead. How could you do that to your father, Buchanan? The man who loved you best of all?"

Bucky felt his stomach drop. The Witch - untrustworthy as she was - had spoken the magic words: his family. He had missed his father terribly, staring out of the ship's portholes at the shuddering waves and wondering whether he was leading the searches. If there would even be searches now. He'd been gone long enough that he would surely have been proclaimed dead, and the throne would have passed to Ula, or Una in her absence. Lantern-eyed mer Queens, the pair of them, ebony and gold, so alike and so different. Like himself and Steve.

 _Steve_.

He understood now the agony of choice. His father, his sisters - his family, the dearest thing he had below the waves, whose call he still heard every night as he lay his head down to sleep on Steve's bunk bed. He could hear the bustling of the palace, the low hooting whistle of the current through its spiralling coralled towers, hear the sound of bells chiming when children danced and swam through the Golden Gardens to the south of the citadel. But Steve - Steve was everything he had ever hoped for, in one glowing, golden package, too rare to pass up. He was quietly courageous, strong-willed and so, so patiently loving - even after their unsteady start. And the more he had stayed in the human world, the more he had sensed that his own feelings were being reflected back in Steve's eyes, though his actions didn't always show it. _Still waters run deep_.

"I can save you, little prince. It so happens that the curse you happen to be under is rather familiar to me-" and she paused, smiling, as if to enjoy a private joke. He struggled against the binding hands, only to have them tighten against his skin, long nails digging deep until he cried out and tears, hot and full of fear and frustration, began to seep out from beneath his eyelids.

"Please! Please, mother-"

"I am not your mother," she hissed, eyes crackling, flashes surging along the trident like St. Elmo's fire. "You are a human, filthy and weak, and you will die like a human unless you break that arrogant prince's pride and you beg me to spare your life."

"Please!" He screamed, pleading, trembling until the trident, buried in his chest, shivered along with him. She cocked her head and smiled, as if he had pleased her; as if all she had wanted was to witness his humiliation, his absolute subordination to her in the face of his death.

"Think on it, little prince. You are human now. Only a death can pay for a stolen life."

Her eyes traced inexorably, dragging him in like a fish on a hook, towards Steve.

He - damn him, damn him to all seven hells - he hesitated a moment. His father, his sisters - Steve. Who did he treasure more in the whole bowl of the universe? His father, his sisters, he had lived without - and felt the loss of keenly - for three years, on board Steve's ship. Three years of staring at the waves and wishing he could throw himself back in like undersize catch, to come home, a prodigal returning. To see his father smile, his sisters laugh and coax him into playing more of their games; to see his Prince's Garden again, the statue with the lips of marble -

_**Steve.** _

Bucky had committed crimes for Steve - crimes of love, of course, but nonetheless contradictory towards the states of human and merfolk. He broke the surface; encountered a human; left his home, his people and his life to throw himself after a human with kind eyes and a sunlight smile. Taken risk after risk. He had fallen in love with another man; they had served together, he an illegal on the boat; he had allowed Steve to take risk after risk for him, with only his heart to offer in return. It wasn't enough. He couldn't allow Steve to die for Bucky's desperation to see his family again; love, as he had once heard someone - a woman - on the boat he left Steve near on that first night saying, was sacrifice. To prove that you loved someone, you had to let them go.

He braced himself against the plunge of the trident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for that cliffhanger.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~No I'm not.~~


	18. The Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Multiple characters' viewpoints of the past, including Becca, Ula, the King and Steve and Bucky themselves - and Part 1 of the dramatic climax of the story!

_My sailor is as smiling_  
_As the pleasant month of May_  
\- traditional

The rose petals - red as blood, spilled from her hands as she leaned over the railings of her father's boat, his stooping, weakened frame beside her - were floating on the surface of the waves, a stain of her guilt against the water. It was James' anniversary - the day he had died, when he was just two years old. The sea was rough as it tossed the boat from side to side, her father struggling to keep his balance on the slippery deck in his sou'wester and gumboots. She held onto his arm, partly to steady him and partly for her own reassurance. This had always been a tough day for them to deal with; her mother had passed two years ago on the same day - of grief, her father had always said, for their son, Rebecca's younger brother - and George Barnes had never really recovered. She watched the petals flutter, like a child's kite on a liquid sky, on the foaming crests of waves and wondered if - wherever he was - James could see them.  


* * *

  
The Merking had, like James' father, never given up the search for his son. Every day he lead searches for the boy, scouting every last inch of his kingdom for any sign of Buchanan, alive or dead. There were a few hoaxes, or mistakes, every so often - a teenage boy who would pretend, in the hopes that he would get to meet and fall in love with the princesses; or else a well-meaning subject, who would see a flash of dark hair and pale blue-silver tail like mercury and would immediately call the guard to report a sighting, at which point it would be revealed to be the wrong boy. The king's every thought was consumed with Buchanan. The kingdom fell almost into chaos until his wife, tired of his constant outings from the palace and lack of rule, crowned their daughter Ula regent, and she governed the seas in his place.

She was not, in truth, a good queen. But neither had he been a good king in the past years. A grieving, desperate father - but a poor king.  


* * *

  
The statue was smooth beneath the Queen's fingers, as she stroked over its marble arms and strong shoulders. Its - his - face was handsome, strong-jawed but with feminine eyes and lips, a coy curl in the corners of the mouth and a soft, winsome gaze, as though flirting with the sculptor. Unwinding the amber coronet from her hair, she held it in her hands, sitting by the statue's feet to think. The petals of Buchanan's red water-sunflowers brushed and tickled her tail as she sat, hours seeming to pass, staring at the fronds of lowwater trees. She could almost hear her brother's voice, talking to the stone boy. He often did, she knew from seeing him through palace windows; for hours on end, he would lie at the statue's feet amongst his flowers and talk to him, as though to a confidant. His silent companion probably knew her brother better than even she and Una, or their father, did. Tonight, the statue held vigil for her as it once had for her brother, and she placed the crown gently over its stone locks, wishing she could ask the marble boy for answers.

* * *

  
Steve was slowly dragged out of sleep to feel Bucky's trembling, anxious body climbing into bed beside his, the sheets lifted to blast his side with cold air before the boy pressed himself against his side and tucked them in again. His hands were freezing, fingertips like blocks of ice, as he webbed them over Steve's belly and chest, face nuzzling into the crook between Steve's throat and his shoulder, and there were hot, wet tears rolling down his cheeks and soaking into his unruly long hair. Steve blinked the sleep away from his vision and gently rolled, pushing the curtains of chestnut silk back to show frightened steel-blue eyes gazing up at him, the wobbling cherry-red lips and tear-smudged cheeks. His chest was warm and full as he watched Bucky try to pretend he was fine, until Steve rubbed a tear away with the pad of his thumb and the boy exhaled shakily into the air between them, the cabin silent but for his quiet hitching sobs.

He was so new to this world. A newborn, really, in all but the most physical sense; nascent, trembling, wide-eyed with wonder and terror. Overwhelmed. But that was part of his charm. The fact that he would never be bored by the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, the way it painted the sky red and pink and orange and purple and blue and then back again before it settled behind the veil of night, the way the stars pushed their way through the blackness like holes being nibbled into fabric by unseen moths fluttering around the lamplight of the moon. Everything was new and so incredibly, unbelievably beautiful to him, and in his awe, he was the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen, either.

His pulse was fluttering in his throat beneath Steve's fingers as he gently tipped Bucky's head up, moonlight glowing in his quicksilver eyes, and Steve could feel the answering thrum of his own heart in his chest. Gravity was pulling them in together, a knot of unseen weight between them, two satellites on a collision course, or a sun and its planet; though who was which, neither knew as they both thought the other. Bucky's mouth, inches from Steve's, was damp, lips redder than he had ever seen, still quivering lightly - probably from his breath ghosting over them, and his eyes slowly slid shut as Steve slotted their mouths together, his hand sliding around to hold Bucky's head. That silent gravity held them together as they kissed, lips moving gently, until Steve took the initiative and coaxed Bucky's mouth open for his tongue, coyly playing at the corners and darting to lick his lower lip until the boy let out a sigh as sweet as honey and Steve answered with a rumble.

Bucky pressed himself closer, moving until Steve could feel the excitable shivering of his limbs against his, and he wrapped an arm around the boy's slim waist to drag him closer. Bucky let out another soft sigh and nestled in, Steve tracing an invisible line from the corner of his mouth to his collarbone with his lips, soft, wet kisses that made Bucky's head tilt back and his body arch, a bowstring pulled taut, before he'd shudder and relax again, Steve's hand gently stroking him still. Fingers brushing his shoulders, upper arms, belly; until Bucky lay, pliant and supple, against the mattress, and Steve pressed another slow, honeyed kiss to his waiting mouth before rolling him over to sleep.  


* * *

  
He gazed up at the ceiling of water, the passing shadows of human ships and the twilight stars breaking the monotonous dark of the night, and ached to be up there, listening to the singing of the world above in his ears. His gaze flickered towards the statue, silent and smiling, so knowledgeable of the human world but unable to tell him. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would say if it could. Whether its - his - voice would be soft, kind, husky as he imagined, perhaps lilting with some accent or another, a dialect that lent him only a deeper seductive air; or bright, excitable and loud, like his own, full of life the way his body seemed even in its static carved state. He phrased his thoughts aloud and, as always, waited. Hoping, perhaps, that tonight would be the night that he was transformed into Pygmalion, able to breathe life into his statue with a word or a brush of his hand.

He would have traded every drop of water in the ocean to have been up there, to have traded wondering and imagination for the real thing. To know humans and their quirks and habits, to feel their vibrant thereness around him and breathe their air and see their sights and live their lives; all he wanted was to be human, to know and understand. Even just for a moment. Even just for a glance, for a breath, for a heartbeat: to see a human, hear them talk, or catch their eye. To know whether they were exactly as his father said. He didn't understand how people who could use their hands so delicately - to carve such a beautiful statue, full of love and care for the subject - could use those hands for harm.

The sky above the rippling glass of his water ceiling was rapidly darkening, the waves stirring up into jagged maelstroms; a storm. He didn't even spare a thought for his father and the rules; simply swam, straight up, knowing that this was his chance. A storm was too dangerous for humans this far out at sea to brave spending much time outside of their ships; he would be able to get close - so close he could see, so close he could even touch, perhaps - and maybe then he would know.

The storm raged, crackling lightning in forks of white light, burning bright in his eyes. The rolling and pitching of the waves above him hiding his careful toings-and-froings beneath the ships, trying to catch glimpses of their inhabitants. Until the splash - and the fall - and the man, the man carved from flesh and bone like the statue was from marble - with his brilliant golden hair and lips like coral and his soft, bubbling breaths as Bucky held him beneath the waves, losing his heart for the first and last time.  


* * *

  
"Please," he asked her, heart speaking, mind in concurrence, "let him go."

"Your choice, little prince," she murmured, and removed the tines of the trident from his chest, the sharp pressure easing.

He felt the air suddenly blow his chest tight as his eyes were forced open, seaweed beginning to tangle around his wrists and ankles with threatening, grasping fingers. He forced himself to hold his breath, feeling his chest begin to ache with pressure to let the air out, lungs beginning to cry out for more oxygen, and he wrenched his arms and legs this way and that to try and fight his way out of his quickly-growing bonds. The seaweed was slimy over his skin, slick and slippery, but stronger than iron; it didn't budge, webbing over him like growing a second skin, until he was bound, starfished, to the seabed as it began to extend longer fingers over his chest, so tight that it crushed a bubble of air out from between his lips.

At his side, Steve stirred, eyes fluttering. His eyelashes, like gossamer threads, batted for a moment before his eyes opened and twin blue suns stared at Bucky for a fraction of a second before the billowing bubble around his head burst and he immediately began to panic. Bucky jerked his head up at the ceiling of water, trying to force Steve to go, to stop being stupid and swim for the surface, but received a sharp, angry head shake in response as the human kicked his legs, approaching him instead.

Clever artist's fingers tore at the bindings. The fronds writhed angrily, slapping and scratching at Steve's hands with hidden barbs that left furrows in the alabaster skin, fierce warnings. His face was beginning to redden with the need for air as Bucky felt his own lungs beginning to give up, his mouth threatening to open of its own accord to breathe and allow himself to drown. Steve's frantic eyes were the only thing keeping him from letting it do so. He kept tearing at Bucky's wrists, desperation written over his face; Bucky took the decision out of his hands by gasping a deep breath, feeling the water rush into his mouth and airways and choking on it, eyes rolling, mind at peace. When he died, Steve would have to give up. Surely.

"Tick tock, little human," the Witch said, tone amused. "You're running out of time. If you don't make for the air soon, you'll be as dead as him."

Steve was staring at him with abject horror in his eyes, fear and already grief, the panic over potentially losing a loved one, and Bucky nodded at the surface again, receiving only a terrified shake of the head in response.

_No. Not without you._


	19. Orpheus and Eurydice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is short. Sorry.

_Immediately after the monsters, die the heroes_  
\- Roberto Calasso

He couldn't look away.

All he was seeing, as Bucky struggled more and more weakly against the constricting bands of seaweed, was the drowning boy he had pulled out of the water that first time; the whey-faced boy with eyes like sea storms, gasping as Steve wrenched his head above the water, throwing him down onto the deck to pound the brine out of his lungs with his fists. It came to him, suddenly, how bizarre it was that a merman - a human who had been a merman previously - couldn't swim; had almost drowned in the sea until a ship had passed and a weak, full-blooded human had spotted the commotion in the water and dived down to fetch him. Bucky had been as weak as a kitten, still vomiting up seawater what felt like hours later, but he had fought not to die. He had been creating waves of his own.

Now he seemed just to lie there, resigned to his fate.

Steve wanted to scream at him, wanted to force him to fight and wriggle free and allow them to make their escape; unable, now, to imagine a life onboard without Bucky's brilliant smile waiting for him in the cabin every evening, without the cool limbs to wrap around his body and press close to at night, without the plush, damp red lips to turn to in the middle of the night when the boy was sleeping and steal kisses from, lighting the intense, raw hunger in his stomach and only kindling the desire for more. His lungs were raw, shrieking for air, head beginning to feel light and foggy from lack of oxygen, but still he tried to dig his fingers between the ropes of seaweed to wrestle them off of Bucky's limbs.

He was all too aware of the thin, dissipating streams of tiny bubbles slipping out of the corners of Bucky's mouth.

He fought to break the boy free, clawing at Bucky's ankles with his fingernails, desperate to get those cruel, strangling fronds off his body - and saw Bucky scream, in a stream of panicked bubbles, when he saw that Steve was still trying to save him. Still frantically ripping at the seaweed binding him. Steve couldn't breathe, could barely move with the exhaustion threatening to swamp him - his head was swimming, lungs screaming as he tried to pull air or water or whatever he could breathe now into them and failing - fear making his heart pound and his temples throb with his pulse, and he struggled for a moment before the seaweed locked tighter around Bucky's ankles.

Steve was crying with fear, wishing it were him on the sea floor; he would take anything over this, having to watch his lover being crushed inexorably down, airless, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but stare at him in terror with eyes that screamed, _Help me._ Bucky sobbed, gasping for air; Steve wanted to do the same, his heart fluttering in his chest like an overexerted hummingbird.

He watched as Bucky's eyes rolled back in his head and he let out a gasp - Steve desperately yanking at the crushing, knotted vines around his chest - a horrible, wet, forced-out sound as blood began to bubble up out of his lips, wispy threads of red that dissolved into the ocean as Steve tugged harder and harder. The Water Witch watched with her phosphorescent eyes, glittering pin-toothed smile wide and glinting red under the light, and cocked her head, seemingly amused by his efforts.

"You've not got long, little man," she told him, nodding at the trickles of blood still slipping out from Bucky's open mouth as he convulsed against the sea floor, Steve's own fingers reddened and stinging as his nails broke and tore. "That will be calling friends soon, all that blood. They can smell him... And a hungry sea-beast is no friend to anyone, human or no."

He ignored her, but as Bucky's eyes slowly, decisively fluttered shut - the shuddering and wracking of his body coming to a halt, he ran his fingers through the wafting dark hair, feeling the boy's head loll into his hand with a horrible, undeniable certainty.

Steve screamed.

He shook Bucky's shoulders, slapping his cheeks - first gently, and then harder, as the panic began to set in and his thoughts narrowed to a single, blaring siren of _wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup_. Steve could barely see through the fog, nothing but the bone-white cheeks with their angry smears of blood from his ravaged nails, desperately trying to keep Bucky awake and alive despite the fact that his heart was sinking in his chest like lead, knowing it was no use. Steve Rogers had never given up without a fight, but in that moment he was forced to acknowledge that there was no more fighting to be done. Bucky was dead.

But the seaweed was drawing back, receding back into the ground, and Bucky began to float a little off the floor, spine arching as he flopped limply in the water; his wrists perfect, alabaster white, as though nothing had happened; as though all he'd done was fall into the water and drop, like a stone, right to the bottom. Perhaps he had. Perhaps Steve had imagined it all. But he would not allow himself to leave Bucky, not with her, not to the vicious, ravenous carnivores already swimming interestedly around him, scenting the blood in the water, eyes zeroed in on him with the boy's body in his arms.

The Water Witch smiled. "Time's up, human."

He launched himself at her, vision clouded with grief and fury, and screamed, a blast of air like a cannon being fired beneath the water. She swung the trident towards him, fizzling and crackling, and he felt a shock like being hit by a sledgehammer in the ribs when it connected; his body was paralysed, his mind thick with pain, and he blinked stars out of his eyes dizzily as she smirked at him, threatening him with another jab of the trident's sharp points.

"You're as stupid - as stubborn, in the name of love and courage - as he was. Humans and merfolk are not made to mix. Did you truly think you would ever be allowed to have him - that his father would ever let one of the merfolk go, especially his own son, to endanger himself amongst the creatures that killed his Queen? He would never." She spun the trident idly, watching him with cold yellow eyes. "I understand that you thought yourself in love with him - and he, with you. Was it his body? Soft, smooth, new as a baby colt's - you imagined him with his limbs wrapped around you, perhaps panting your name into your mouth as you took him - violated him, having stolen him from the father and kingdom that loved him most. Or was it his eyes? So expressive, so... human, aren't they? So frightened, begging you for help even though he knew that you could do nothing. And still you fought. Because you're as stupid as he was. Love is what killed him, human. His love for you, and yours for him."

She smiled.

"He does not belong to you. Give him to me."

Steve shook his head, holding Bucky to him even tighter. He wished he could feel the soft, strong arms wrapping around his neck, Bucky's hot, trembling kisses against his neck, the eager thud of his heart beneath the paper-thin skin, ribcage pushing out his chest with quick breaths. He would never let him go. Whatever the witch said, she was wrong. Bucky had belonged to him, he knew, since the moment he laid eyes on Steve. He knew, because the same was true of himself.

"Give him to me," she repeated, lowering the trident threateningly.

A beat passed. Two.

A sickening jolt caught Steve behind the navel, a searing gut-deep pain like being skewered on a giant fish hook, and the surge of white-hot agony through his system made his arms loosen around Bucky, the boy dropping out of his arms and onto the sea floor in a cloud of silt and sand. The moment he released him, the hook started rising - pulling Steve away faster and faster, as he screamed and writhed to be free, shrieking Bucky's name, not caring about how much water he swallowed, how likely he was to drown before whatever had saved him managed to pull him to the surface -

His head broke the waves with a wet, anguished scream, and he swallowed the next foam-capped surge, tasting the salt on his tongue and feeling the tears stinging his cheeks.


	20. Don't

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost at the end now, folks!

_Swan dive down, eleven stories high_  
 _Hold your breath until you see the light_  
 _You can sink to the bottom of the sea_  
 _Just don't go without me_  
\- The Civil Wars

The wind, howling around him like a grieving lover, buffeted the waves against his weak body. He was tossed from crest to crest like a ragdoll, the tiny rowing boat he and Bucky had come out on bobbing and creaking ominously in the distance as the sky darkened, beginning to fork with flashes of white light and the clouds knitting above him into a thick submersive blanket. He dove beneath the water as another crashing roll of thunder pealed above him, lightning crackling to the earth so close he swore he could feel it tingle in the water, every hair standing up on end, the scent of ozone and salt filling his nostrils. The world was mourning Bucky much as Steve himself was; the sea screaming about its lost son, throwing itself around in the glass bowl of the planet in an uncontrollable tantrum.

He dove, kicking his legs frantically, as deep as he could manage, until his lungs were threatening to burst and his eyes felt hot inside his head. Still miles above the bottom of the sea, where Bucky was waiting for him. Again and again, returning to the surface only long enough to drag in another breath before shooting downwards again like a loosed arrow; forced to tread water and let the rain wash the tears from his face as he cursed at the sky, fire in his blood, grief swallowing him whole. It wasn't fair, it had never been fair; but what was unfairest of all was that they had been allowed that short, happy time together at all before it had been torn away from them in bleeding hands and choking, crushing lungs.

Another peal of thunder rolled across the sky, lightning arcing down to the waves with a fizzle and a high-pitched shriek of burning oxygen. Steve was growing weaker still, muscles barely able to manage a sluggish twitch in the water to keep himself afloat; the longer he stayed in the water, cold sinking into his bones with soft fingers, coaxing him into letting go - into joining Bucky - the less he resisted the waiting arms of airlessness. There was a moment when Nat King Cole's voice echoed in his memory, the feeling of Bucky's hand warm and smooth in his as Steve rocked them from side to side in the cabin, and he closed his eyes to remember it better.

Their mouths meeting, tentative and trembling, as Bucky closed his eyes, lashes fluttering against his cheekbones. Steve's hand cupping the back of Bucky's head to encourage him to press a little closer, allow himself to sink into the kiss like the embrace of a warm bath at the end of a fraught day: a tonic on both of their strained nerves, the pair of them having waited a whole lifetime for this love to fall into their laps like one of the Hesperides' apples. The boy letting out a trembling breath against his mouth until Steve did it again, pressing their lips together a little more firmly, holding Bucky a little closer against himself, mouth falling open lightly. Tasting the brine and sweetness on Bucky's tongue as he clutched Steve closer, sighing into his mouth and trembling overexcitedly against Steve's body. That kiss had felt like the first awakening of Steve's life; the moment he had realised he was alive and in love. Feeling the beating of his heart syncing with another person's as though they only shared the one.

For those few moments, it was all too easy to let himself fall into memories. The sea around him quieted to nothing, and he was still but for the feeling of Bucky's arms around him, the press of their lips and the soft rush of the boy's breath over his lower lip when Steve kissed him. But it only lasted for moments.

The sea reached out to wash over Steve's head, and his limbs began to fail as he closed his eyes again and allowed himself, at last, to sink.  
  


* * *

  
It was Dugan who pulled him out of the water and into a lifeboat. Falsworth, settled with the oars at the stern of the boat, held out two thick woollen blankets, the standard rescue gear for almost-drowning victims; Dugan shrugged his away, wrapping it around Steve's miserable, thin frame instead. He did, however, accept his bowler hat back from Falsworth and jam it onto his head before relieving the other man of rowing duty and forcing them, with long, powerful strokes, back towards the moored _Miantonomah_ at the docks. His shirt clung, soaked through, to his thick muscles, and he shivered every so often, but no matter how many times Steve tried to give him the blanket back, he refused point-blank with an expression that could have curdled milk.

"No, God damn it, Rogers. You're more in need of it than me."

Falsworth sat beside Steve, trying to rub the feeling back into his weak arms. Steve shied away, too raw for the sensation of someone's hands on his skin - for the wrong person's hands on his skin (they're all the wrong person now) - and stared dully at the water, feeling as though he were leaving every part of Steve Rogers behind beneath the waves as he was towed further and further from the spot where Bucky had died. Falsworth's worried eyes traced his face for several minutes, his mouth opening, pausing, and then closing again frequently - wanting to say something, and failing to find the words - and Steve was grateful. If he heard Bucky's name, he might cry. A luxury he couldn't afford himself.

He was bundled aboard with disapproving glowers from Captain Phillips - hiding, he knew, a concern that went gut-deep and made tears burn like flames in the backs of his eyes - and gentle, worried words from Dr. Erskine. He shrugged his shoulders away from the civilian's warm, careful hands, the inherent concern and care making him feel sick. He didn't deserve the attention, the worry; it had been him, as the Witch said, who had killed Bucky - by falling into the ocean in the first place, that night during the storm. If he had never existed - if Bucky had never known about him, or any other human, had never thrown himself so stupidly at the human world and fallen so headlong in love and refused to allow Steve to do anything but love him back - Bucky would be alive. The blood lay on Steve's hands, thick and sticky as only guilt can be, and no matter how much he tried it would never come off.

Dr. Erskine peppered him with questions, wondering what had possessed him to row out in a storm like this (it hadn't been storming when they left), and whether he was cold, feverish or numb (all three; though it had little to do with his bodily temperature and everything to do with the roil of guilt and grief in his mind, drowning him all over again in images of Bucky's terrified wide blue eyes as the ropes of seaweed crushed the last few precious gasps of air from his delicate lungs). Dr. Erskine asked after Bucky, and the pain hit him like running into a brick wall - he screwed his eyes shut on a hoarse, wordless cry of agony, flinging his arm out to smash bottles and vials and trays of instruments against the wall, making the doctor and the nurse orderlies skitter backwards.

" _Don't_ ," he whispered, shutting down on that gaping, ravenous ache inside of himself, "don't _say_ it."

Dr. Erskine seemed to understand. He patted Steve's shoulder with a genuinely saddened, "I'm sorry, Steven," and left Steve to his thoughts.  
  


* * *

  
Dugan stopped by a little while later, to show Steve back to his cabin now that he'd had the all-clear from the doctor. He chattered away for a few minutes - clearly trying to cheer Steve up - until the door to Steve's cabin swung open and there was no Bucky waiting for him on the bed. No glowing sea-blue eyes or laughing cherry-red mouth; no excited cries of 'Dum Dum!', Bucky's nickname for Dugan, nothing. Just silence.

"Where-"

"No, Dugan," Steve murmured, pained, turning to look at him with agonised eyes. "Please. Don't." He couldn't stand to hear the questions; couldn't stand to have to relive it, again, in his mouth as the words came out, forcing himself to admit that he had failed Bucky at the moment it was most important. There was no excuse as to why Bucky shouldn't have been there with him, wrapped in Steve's arms with his mouth on Steve's neck and Steve gasping his name into the air along with the _I love you, I love you_ s he had never really allowed himself to say. Nothing but Steve's personal failings - too late to stop it, too weak to put it right.

"What happened?"

"He fell." Steve bit out. He tossed himself onto the bed, hugging the pillow to his chest - breathing in Bucky's scent of salt and honey on the cotton, feeling a tug in his chest of more rising tears. His shoulders had begun to quiver by the time it seemed to sink in for Dugan that the boy was gone - he tried to speak again, an "I-" that he barely managed to get out before Steve sobbed, " _No - please_ -" and the door shut behind Dugan as Steve curled up on the bed and felt the dam inside him break.


	21. The Mermaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fate of the _Miantonomah_.

_It doesn't feel so very bad now; I think the end is the start._  
_Begin to feel very glad now;_  
_All things are a part._  
\- Van Der Graaf Generator

 _Don't you fret, my dear_  
_It'll all be over soon_  
_I'll be waiting here for you_  
_For you, for you_  
\- The Civil Wars

The _Miantonomah_ was locked in the midst of another storm the first night that Steve heard it. A quiet, rippling voice like running water outside the porthole, familiar tunes he could hum in his sleep. He rushed to the porthole, pressing himself against the glass, desperately searching the blank black waves outside for the source of the singing - a voice he would know anywhere, in a crowd of thousands, in life and in death -but there was no sign of the boy it belonged to, no laughing silvery eyes or bright glimmer of red lips curved up in Bucky's shy smile. He waited for hours, the storm pounding at the bulkheads and the ship pitching like a creature possessed beneath him, throwing him frequently off-balance. But Bucky didn't reappear. Just his voice, trickling through Steve's consciousness like the fragile thread of a memory half-forgotten.

He ran, through the gangways and bursting out onto deck, the rain spattering over his face as the clouds collided miles above him, clamouring anvils of black and grey, and threw himself against the railings, calling Bucky's name. No response came. He searched frantically - he had heard him, he knew he'd heard it, clear as day - heard Bucky's voice, singing to him, a siren call he could never have resisted - but there was nothing, no sign of him amongst the crashing, rolling waves.

He was stripping off his uniform - wrenching the heavy, wet woollen sweater off his thin back, unlacing his boots - when Dugan found him, grabbed him around the waist and physically dragged him back from the railing. His fists flailed and he screamed, desperate to believe that the past months of trailing around the sea thinking that Bucky was dead, drowned, were a fantasy - a horrible dream he was finally waking up from - until he saw the fear in Dugan's eyes. His meaty hands were tight around Steve's wrists, leaving bruises. No matter how Steve struggled to be freed, fought to be let go (his pathetic weight and scrawny frame no match for Dugan's brick-shithouse build), he was trapped in his friend's arms, as Dugan yelled for Falsworth up in the pilothouse to _help me, God damn it!_

"LET ME _GO_!" Steve begged. "HE'S _THERE, LISTEN_ TO HIM, I CAN HEAR IT - _PLEASE, LET ME GO_ \- HE NEEDS ME, LISTEN TO HIM-"

"HE'S NOT THERE, ROGERS," Dugan told him fiercely, shivering as he had to shout above the howling roar of the storm, soaked to the bone and freezing cold. Steve was encircled in his arms in only a vest and his trousers, socked feet struggling not to slip and slide all over the slick deck, but he barely felt the cold; Bucky's voice warmed him from the inside out, a flickering flame in his chest, bursting in fireworks through every vein in his body. He was calling Steve's name, laughing, from somewhere over the starboard bow, singing in a language Steve could suddenly understand - the bubbling, rolling language he'd spoken when Steve had first pulled him out - words that begged Steve to come to him, to come beneath the water and hold and kiss him again, to be alive with him in the roiling water.

"HE IS, LISTEN-"

"ROGERS!" Falsworth yelled, wiping the rain out of his eyes as he squinted at Steve, "COME ON, THIS STORM'S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE-"

"BUCKY'S OUT THERE - I HAVE TO GET HIM, PLEASE, HE'S IN THERE, HE'LL DROWN -"

"ROGERS, IF WE LET YOU GO IN THERE, _YOU'LL_ DROWN!" Falsworth hollered back, and Dugan nodded. Against his will - hopelessly overpowered by the two of them - Steve was dragged back inside, into the med bay side room, where Dugan locked the door and stood guard in front of it as though afraid Steve would try to slip out again. Both he and Falsworth were shivering, drenched, with wide, white-rimmed eyes full of panic.

"Steve," Falsworth said gently, tone impossibly sad, "I know you think you heard him, but he's not there. You can't go out there in a storm like this, you'll get thrown overboard. And with all due respect, I don't think you're fit to be on deck at a time like this. You're still -" he paused, swallowing hard, "- indisposed. Grief is awful, and we all understand - we can imagine how difficult it is not to see him everywhere when you know he... when you know what happened. But you can't go trying to dive in there after him. We can't lose you as well, sir."

"I heard him," Steve insisted stubbornly, shutting Falsworth's consolations away, refusing to even acknowledge what was being said. He had heard him, he knew it - and if Bucky was talking to him, he was breathing. He was alive. And there was no way in hell Steve would leave him now. "I heard him, Falsworth. He was out there."

"No, Steve, he wasn't. I don't know what you heard, but it's... it's normal, when you're grieving, to think you see or hear them when you're in distress or in difficult situations. That doesn't mean it's real."

"He was _there_!" Steve yelled, furious. " _Listen to me!_ I heard him, he was there - and if you ever try to stop me from seeing him again, I'll not be held responsible for my actions - _is that understood, Petty Officer?_ "

"Steve -"

"Rogers!" Dugan spoke up, his eyes hard as flints from where he stood, arms crossed, against the door. "If you're threatening an officer, you'll be locked up in your cabin until we land and then likely brought in front of the court martial-"

"I DON'T CARE!" Steve hollered, lashing out with a balled fist. Falsworth batted it away with barely any effort, but he looked shaken. Steve had never been one for fighting unless it was someone else he was trying to defend. But swinging his fists in anger - that was never a Steve Rogers thing to do, it seemed, until now. "LET  ME GO! BUCKY IS OUT THERE!"

Dugan shook his head. "No."  


* * *

  
The storms raged harder than ever as the _Miantonomah_ set sail for Cherbourg, England disappearing behind her through the mist of sheeting rain and crackling lightning. The flashes of light illuminated enormous, white-crested rolls of waves and floating wreckage of smaller fishing boats as the rocky Bristol shore fell away behind them and the Channel opened out into the mouth of the Atlantic. Flashes of silver-scaled fishes occasionally glimmered beneath the water, and Steve watched from his cell room - a stipulation of Captain Phillips, who, after the first incident with Falsworth and Dugan, had placed Steve under constant storm guard in a locked cabin below decks - as they glided past, free as birds. He hated being cooped up; being reminded of a childhood spent in almost constant isolation, scarlet fever and glandular fever and mumps and measles and every other infectious disease under the sun having struck, it felt, at some point in his life - until a new flash of silver caught his eye. A tail. Much larger, fanned and broad and accompanied by smaller pinpricks of mercury-blue, twin stars beneath the waves.

Bucky. He was sure of it. There were only glimpses - the flicker of his tail, the coy glance of one silver-blue eye - before the water clouded and hid him again, but there was no doubt in Steve's mind that Bucky was out there. He could hear the voice again, the teasing, lilting song that threaded his ears like ribbons of lyrical music, until he crushed himself against the glass trying to press through it and out into Bucky's arms. He knew he was there, waiting - he had to be - Steve had waited so long. Fought so hard to be let out, last time. But now he had no chance, no chance at all. The thought made bitter tears spring to his eyes, and he leant his head against the glass and sobbed, heart aching.

_Let me out!_

The song didn't stop - never stopped until the storm had blown itself out, at which point it would fade into the distance, sadder and sadder, as though Bucky were leaving him, believing that Steve no longer wanted to find him. The ends of the storms were always hardest to bear. Hearing the initial joy in his voice - Steve having found him, able to hear him laughing in the water, pure bursting happiness like ripples of sunshine - peter out into confusion and melancholy, questioning as Steve failed every time to make an appearance (as, on the ship, Steve slammed himself against portholes and bulkheads, screaming, until black bruises appeared on his skin and his eyes were red with spilled tears, voice hoarse as he screamed Bucky's name over and over, _I'm here, I'm here, I'm trying, I'm coming - Buck, don't go, please don't go, please - I love you, please stay, I'm here, I'm coming, Bucky, please, please -_ )

Eventually, the water calmed, the thunder emitting only soft rumbles as the sky cleared to a pale bluish grey, and Falsworth knocked on the door, his calm, clipped accent letting Steve know that he would be allowed out once he had calmed down. Steve swore a blue streak at him, words to the effect of that if Falsworth thought he could calm down after he'd been forced to stay locked up when Bucky was outside trying to reach him again, then he had another think coming - and was told, "Suit yourself, hospitalman."

Steve leant his head against the glass and wished, for the thousandth time, that Bucky would come back. Even just to look through the porthole at him. Anything, for a glimpse of that beautiful, beloved face, the soft smile and eyes like winter stars.  


* * *

  
The blast came at two-fifteen in the afternoon, an explosion that threw Steve against the wall, banging his head and making him collapse, dazed, to the floor. He struggled to his feet, knowing a bad sign when he saw one - and his suspicions were confirmed at the sound of a key in the lock a few minutes later, his guard letting him out with panic in his eyes. The ship, he said, was sinking; the gangway listed to the left and down, and Steve translated that in his head to a hole somewhere in the _Miantonomah_ 's stern, starboard side; she was going down rapidly.

Steve wondered if the people aboard the Titanic had felt as oddly calm as he did, making his way topside towards the lifeboats. His head was throbbing dully, and he was still staggering partly from the listing of the ship and partly from the likely concussion from having his head slammed against the bulkhead by the mine blast. Other seamen raced past him, heading for the top deck; Steve didn't run, barely even walking. He banged on doors as he passed, yelling that there'd been a mine and to get out now whilst the chance still existed; helped drag a couple of semi-conscious injured out of the med bay and into the boats (as a hospitalman it was, after all, his job, even if he was technically considered off-duty for the foreseeable future thanks to his storm-caused meltdowns). He remained in that strange state of calm even as the deck began to tilt under him, watching more and more lifeboats being launched without him in them - Dugan in one, with many of the other engineers, and Falsworth in charge of another, blowing his whistle and calling rowing timings.

Dr. Erskine was still evacuating the med bay, helping the last man out, a tiny, weakened Seaman Recruit with shaggy brown hair and dazed, glassy blue eyes. He looked so much like Bucky that Steve felt unable to do anything but help; shrugged the boy onto his back and carried him, childlike, to the last lifeboat as the deck began to be swamped by waves, the ship crackling and creaking beneath his feet. Water lapped at the bottoms of his trousers as he laid the boy down carefully in the boat, Dr. Erskine climbing in beside him. He held his hand out for Steve to clamber in, and with one last look around deck - making sure that no man had been left behind - Steve obeyed, in the nick of time.

He rowed them away as the _Miantonomah_ finally gave up the ghost, her hull sucked down into the darkness as the sky began to blacken, perhaps called into another storm by the blast of the mine that had destroyed the last connection he had to Bucky - their cabin, still with two unmade bunks, two pillows that smelled of Bucky's sweet, salty scent, the warmth of his body and the shape of his limbs creased into the blankets. Steve stared at the water as he rowed, and rowed, and rowed.

The doctor was calm, issuing softly-spoken commands to the hospitalmen and orderlies as they reached another boat and transferred the injured man across; there were more supplies, more room, in the other boat, and they were closer to the shore of Le Havre. Steve was about to follow him across when lightning flashed behind them and he saw, clear as day, Bucky's face, floating just a couple of inches beneath the water.

He dove in without thinking.

The water was freezing, lapping at his skin and hair and salt stinging his eyes, but he was enveloped - entranced - by the silver of Bucky's eyes, the glimmering, swishing tail flickering gently behind him as the boy sank a little further, arms reaching for Steve with a soft, enticing smile on his face. His mouth opened - Steve's heart jumped in his chest, and he wanted to scream, _No! Not again!_ \- but Bucky didn't drown, didn't gargle and choke on seawater. Instead, he laughed, overjoyed, and began to sing, hands taking Steve's in a cool, soft grip and pulling him close beneath the water.

The human world disappeared around them until it was just boy and man, human and merman, in a cosmos of water and eyes like stars, each the other's sunlight, warmed by one another and feeling nothing but the breathlessness of being in love and finally, after so long, reunited. Bucky tangled his fingers in Steve's hair, and Steve pulled him in with a weak, trembling gasp, fitting their mouths together. All he needed to breathe was Bucky against him, his lungs filling with the taste of the sea and honey, his hands full of soft locks of hair and smooth, pearl-like skin, and he happily sank further and further without knowing anything but Bucky against him, falling not into death but in love, until he could barely breathe with how happy he was, finally.

The sea swallowed them both, at last, and Steve Rogers was never seen again.  


* * *

  
_A mermaid found a swimming lad,_  
_Picked him for her own,_  
_Pressed her body to his body,_  
_Laughed; and plunging down,_  
_Forgot in cruel happiness_  
_That even lovers drown._

 **A Man Young And Old / III. The Mermaid** , William Butler Yeats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to say a really heartfelt thank you to everyone who has read this, whether from start to finish or just coming in at the end here or at whatever point. Honestly, this is one of those mammoth undertakings that I really wasn't sure of the reception I would get, and I've been overwhelmed by people's responses and comments. Thank you so much for sticking with this, and thank you so much for all the feedback you've given me.
> 
> This fic does have a [playlist](http://8tracks.com/ig_sparke/siren-call) on 8tracks, which you're welcome to check out (in fact, I actively encourage it!).
> 
> My Tumblr is [here](http://jamesbucky.co.vu), for those of you who might want to leave comments/thoughts/prompts/what have you there, instead.


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